70. Ecstasy - Duchess Theatre

It’s taken me a little while to pick apart my feelings about this one, as I found it both an incredibly real, powerful performance and at the same time entirely emotionally ineffective for me. Which, I am going to point out right away isn’t the same thing as thinking it was bad – the production was clearly superb. It mostly just means that my reaction was complicated.


To explain, I’m really going to have to give a bit of background to my expectations. Ecstasy wasn’t a play I particularly had any opinion on, despite it getting many rave reviews, but during the great I Am The Wind war of 2011 Ecstasy was raised as an alternative approach to portraying depression, and a particularly devastating one. I can totally understand this reaction, but didn’t feel it myself. I think, though, that’s because I never overly connect to hyper-realistic work, I think my own view of the world is a little too fantastical for that (it’s a family trait, my niece was utterly convinced I was a werewolf until she was eight – though I may have been a little responsible for that). I find it much easier to relate and connect to things that are slightly disconnected from reality like I Am The Wind or Nevermore  last year, which despite not being about depression – is probably still the closest to representing how I feel about it in an odd way.

That said, although this didn’t provoke the visceral reaction in me that it did in others, I still thoroughly enjoyed it. Though, enjoyed perhaps isn’t quite the right word. It was a fascinating production, deeply realistic, carefully captured, recognisable, familiar and frequently uncomfortable to watch. The writing was subtle, understated and clever with some truly wonderful moments, Jean challenging Len’s casual racism for example was a highlight for me, though it was what was left unsaid that proved the most powerful. In fact the only moment that really faltered was the ending, with Jean’s breakdown – that didn’t quite ring true for me and possibly also accounts for the disconnection and vague dissatisfaction I felt as I left the theatre – though really this is a small issue in comparison to the rest of the production.

The writing was more than ably supported by both a memorable set, with the small cramped 70s apartment isolated and minimised in the vast blackness of the rest of the stage; and in some truly stunning performances. We had an understudy, James Bennett, on as Len alongsiode Siân Brooke, Allen Leech and the always excellent Sinéad Matthews – though without the understudy slip I would never have guessed he was not part of the normal cast based on the impressively tight, supportive performances which all managed to be both nuanced and familiar. Siân Brooke, in paticular, stood out for me, understandably, as lead Jean – managing to be both separate and closed down, whilst simmering with recognisable suppressed emotion.

A really strong, impressive production of an equally impressive play - even if it perhaps did not touch me emotionally in the way it has others.