Height of the Storm - "See it twice to fully appreciate the quality of the direction and writing."

Christopher Hampton, who has successfully translated Florian Zeller's French plays before for the West End, says in the programme that it was only when he sees Zeller's plays a second time that they become clear. So having seen this interesting play in Bath last month I was excited to see it again at the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End to find out if it was correct. I can report that it is absolutely true, as the complicated jigsaw of clues unfolds on a second viewing you can follow the action and begin to understand what we are seeing and more importantly appreciate the quality of the performances and production.

Like in the highly emotional and moving play about dementia, The Father on which the writers collaborated all is not what it seems and for a while we struggle to follow or even work out who is telling the story.

When the curtain rises on the wonderful set by designer Anthony Ward of a grand duck egg blue kitchen of a French countryside house with Andre staring out of the window in the half light as his daughter Anne enters we soon get a sense that not all is right in the family. In the scenes that follow we see time slips, character switches and changes in intensity which seems on first viewing deliberately written to confuse and mislead the audience. This may be intended as it explores the confusion of feelings of dementia in parents and the grief from the loss of a family member or two.

Director Jonathan Kent guides us through this confusion of memories and reality with visual clues and lighting changes that add to the verbal clues within the script. The storm of the title has taken place the night before we first meet them but is also a metaphor for the storm that has hit the family and the impact of the “situation” the two daughters are dealing with.

It is hard to imagine two more appropriate actors for the central roles of the long married couple Andre and Madeline. Jonathan Pryce conveys the tender affection for his wife with a gentle quiet authority. His stillness and slow deliberate movements convey the loss he feels and the confusion of dementia. Eileen Atkins is his wife Madeline, drifting in and out of scenes, fading into the darkness but when centre stage she is in charge, organising and caring for him and the family. Their years of life experience are etched on their faces and in the looks they share with each other. Their dependency on each other is clear. As she says to him in a promise they will always be together.

Amanda Drew and Anna Madeley are their daughters Anne and Elise who arrive at the house from Paris to deal with "the situation" by looking at Andre's old diaries, recalling past conversations and planning for the future. We observe their interactions with their parents in a series of short scenes which create the jigsaw pieces that we need to assemble to understand the play. James Hillier plays a man lurking in the background or on his phone about a house sale in perhaps the strongest clue of all of what we are seeing.

The exquisite lighting design by Hugh Vanstone captures the sunlight streaming through the kitchen windows and subtly fades across the room to create a sense of half life enabling characters to fade into the shadows. On a second viewing he subtle lighting changes help distinguish the switches from realities to memories in each scene.

By the end of this intense moving production each audience member will have view of who has died but on a second viewing there appears only one logical explanation for the switches we witness  and if that logic is true it makes the whole thing incredibly powerful and wonderful. This is a play you should go and see for the quality of the production and the performances of Pryce and Atkins but you should see it twice to fully appreciate the quality of the direction and writing.

Nick Wayne

Five stars