Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Pete Ashmore, Charlotte Beaumont, Emily Bevan, Bhawna Bhawsar, Susan Bovell, Natasha Cottriall, Keith Dunphy, Karan Gill, Jack Sandle, Ayoola Smart.
The interpretation of what is a universally enjoyed modern classic to the lights and close-up inspection of the theatre can hinge greatly in the eyes of the audience on just how close it gets to the emotions they would expect to be portrayed, of the damage and the reconciliation they feel is appropriate in the modern world.
It is one thing to marvel in the delight of an imaginative reinterpretation of a Kit Marlowe or William Shakespeare, another to see Agatha Christie brought to the stage and delighted in the solving of a crime and yet the modern classic is judged with a keener eye, the feeling of hopeful clarification via the medium of theatre, the highlighting of the modern love and grief in all its glory; it is in this that the bare and The Lovely Bones of story telling come through with anguish and powerful responsibility.
A couple’s grief, especially one that involves the loss of a child taken from them in the ugly circumstances in which the play revolves, is a complex and far from unifying process; for some it is the intensity of the loss which drives them to separate, the mind of both parent is fixed on questioning the loss but how they deal with it does not always correspond with the other’s feelings.
To capture this sense of divided loyalty, the memory of the child, and the love they might realise was the basis for their own marriage requires a performance that is persuasive and natural, it cannot be deemed in the eyes of the audience of being built on a foundation of false premise; it can be easy to show love, it is quite another to express such sadness at a loss of a bond brought on by grief.
In this aspect, both Emily Bevan and Jack Sandle as Susie Salmon’s parents, Abigail and Jack, didn’t just comply with the expectations of showing a set of grieving parents drifting apart, they portrayed with exceptional anguish the distraught nature and the fear of silence in their lives with absolute honesty and the passion of deep regrets laid bare. Alongside Charlotte Beaumont exceptionally charged performance as the murdered teenager, the scenes in which the couple were on stage and saw their life as one disintegrating, eroding, as each layer of life was taken from their daughter’s memory.
A tremendous stage adaptation by Bryony Lavery of Alice Sebold’s modern classic novel, a moving, sensitively handled, and fiercely hot-blooded affair, The Lovely Bones at the Everyman Theatre is a polished gem, one that is unafraid to open up the emotions of what it is to let loose the uncomfortable forces that wish harm on society, and the fall out and the subsequent healing process that accompanies them; a majesty of movement, direction and staging.
Ian D. Hall