Writer: Alistair McDowall
Director: Vicky Featherstone
Alistair McDowall’s eagerly awaited new play, opening at the Royal Court, begins as a gripping examination of two Victorian obsessions, madness and spiritualism. However, after the interval the story soon turns to hokum, employing a time travelling narrative similar to Dr Who with a dollop of The Da Vinci Code thrown in for good measure.
The Glow begins in darkness as a Victorian spiritualist explores a cavernous asylum looking for a woman she can use as a conduit in her meetings where she summons entities from the other side. In the gloomiest corner she finds a nameless inmate, who can hardly speak, and who she christens Sadie. Mrs Lyall brings Sadie home to live with her and her son Mason, who takes an instant dislike to his mother’s new project. As Mrs Lyall trains Sadie to open herself up to the communications of spirits, Mason realises that Sadie may be more talented than his mother in talking to the dead.
The first act, just 40 minutes, is tight though Vicky Featherstone’s direction brings too much humour out of the script, which undermines the mystery and tension within this odd little family. The second act is 55 minutes long, and sprawls centuries, although most of it is set in the 1300s where everyone talks in riddles. Sadie appears in most scenes, eternally destined to be abused and pursued. Engagingly puzzling at first, this representation of myths that endure soon becomes tiring.
Thankfully, the performances go some way in redeeming the evening with Rakie Ayola putting in an excellent turn as haughty Mrs Lyall, and then later, a retired nurse. Fisayo Akinade is good too as the beleaguered Mason, and is especially watchable as the 1970s historian who begins to unravel the legend of the woman who glows. As downbeat Sadie, Rita Zmitrowicz is a striking figure on stage, and she does well to provide her character with some permanency even as the centuries flash by. Completing the cast is Tadhg Murphy in the rather pointless role of Haster.
Merle Hensel’s design of shifting concrete walls with an opening like a portal delivers a menacing atmosphere in the first half, but it doesn’t work so well in the second where forests are now projected onto the set. Likewise Nick Powell’s sound design is more effective when it is quiet and curious than when it signals drama upon the stage.
McDowall has taken his inspiration from an almost forgotten book, The Woman in Time by Dorothy Waites, which traces a nameless woman through paintings and poetry. In the play text, Professor Helen Cullwick explains the book in more detail than Akinade’s historian does in the play itself, but the legend of the eternal woman and the legend of Waites’ book itself is far more interesting than McDowall’s confusing time-hopping ghost story.
Runs until 5 March 2022
The Reviews Hub Score
Disappointing
