REVIEW: SPIRAL at Jermyn Street Theatre, 2-19 August

‘a triumph of scale; a small play that contains within it a couple of large tragedies’ ★★★★ ½

It’s always a pleasure to see a play that is much better than a summary would lead you to expect. In the case of Spiral at the Jermyn Street Theatre, this is a matter of four wonderful performances that do justice to the material and a script that mostly evades potential pitfalls of sentimentality, voyeurism, and moralizing. The story is relatively simple: the father of a missing teenager befriends a young woman in difficult circumstances. The play’s complexities come about from the misunderstandings and unintended consequences that stem from this unusual friendship.

The relationship at the heart of Spiral feels fresh, a platonic friendship between an older man and a younger woman of a type that is rarely depicted onstage. This is beautifully acted by Jasper Jacob as Tom and Abigail Hood (the writer of the play) as Leah. The other two characters are slightly more broadly drawn, though never to the level of caricature. Kevin Tomlinson (who also directs) as Leah’s boyfriend, the brutish Mark, and Rebecca Crankshaw as Tom’s exasperated wife, Gill, serve as a skeptical chorus, incapable of believing that this relationship is as pure and disinterested as they are told.

The play achieves a constant state of tension that is mostly a question about what kind of thing it is – what revelations will come out? How – if at all – will the central friendship change? This is masterfully mirrored by the ongoing investigations into Tom and Gill’s missing daughter, whose absence colors everything that happens onstage. What really happened to her, and will we ever find out? This play is beautifully placed within a thicket of potential atrocities, only some of which happen or are revealed to have happened. But it also has something to say about how to live with suspense, and how to cope with not knowing the most important details such as what has happened in the past, and what will happen in the future. It is a triumph of scale; a small play that contains within it a couple of large tragedies. As in a Greek tragedy, almost everything bad happens offstage, but only some of these bad things are narrated to us – the rest are left to us to imagine, or to speculate about.

I strongly recommend going to see this play, not just to spend a fulfilling evening at the theatre but to see an example of what it is possible to do with the form of a play, how to contain pieces of people’s lives within it and gracefully let them go. Some might find the last few scenes too sentimental, while others might feel that the sentimentality is earned. Either way, this is a phenomenal piece of work.

Images: Mark Dawson Photography

Spiral, written by Abigal Hood, Jermyn Street Theatre, 2^nd-19^th August (produced by Veritas Theatre Company), directed by Kevin Tomlinson, https://www.jermynstreettheatre.co.uk/show/spiral/.

Reviewer Clio Doyle is a playwright and university lecturer.