Review: Bodies Unfinished

Intense and compulsive, Lewis Hetherington’s talent is there to taste in this triumph of new theatre

In a year dominated by revivals, from Rattigan to Ayckbourn to Wesker, it’s a relief to see something new steamrolling into the Brockley Jack. Especially when it’s a complete package. The synergy between Lewis Hetherington’s gutting text, Timothy Stubbs Hughes’ tenacious direction and Stephanie Williams’ beautifully sparse set: it’s all a reminder young blood still has the gusto to produce astounding, gut wrenching theatre.

Set in any time, any place, Hetherington’s play follows Alan’s journey from a loveless marriage to a sort of devastating self-discovery. Fed up, he puts his mother in a home, leaves his wife and child and arranges a date with Stella, a call girl. While it’s part of “a plan”, he soon realises his optimism is destined for isolation, something Joyce, his mother, puts best: “I sit heavy in this life”.

Hetherington’s achievement is to make all that noise without ever really shouting. His Alan is far from eloquent, he bumbles around and he stammers. There’s a brilliant scene where he fumbles through a description of his job, as a geneticist decapitating chicken embryos, to the sultry Stella with pathetic schoolboy innocence. But while he’s frustratingly meek, he’s also compulsive, and however painful it may be, everything is tinged with the darkest of humour.

Williams’ minimal set, complemented by Katherine Lowry’s ghost-like lighting, creates that atmosphere perfectly. The clean, clinical wooden panelling, the uncomfortable looking chairs and the leather bag that keeps returning, it works for every location and it fits. And even if the stage is empty, Francis Adams portrays Alan’s contradictions with delicate brio, attentive to all the quirky nuances of a mid life crisis. Jean Apps is haunting as Joyce: as she describes the birth of her son in all its bloody detail her eyes seem to emit a hypnotic beam. Katerina Stearman is powerful as the used-up Stella and Jane Dodd’s irate wife-in-denial Carol completes an astonishing ensemble, in a production that should get the blood flowing for any aspiring theatre-maker.

Bodies Unfinished

Brockley Jack, London

July 14