Evening All Afternoon ★★★★

The days of the last pandemic seem an age away now, even with the Covid-19 public inquiry still chuntering on in the UK. Life seems to have returned to something like normal, and we are all back in the theatres looking for ways to challenge and/or amuse ourselves. Why do we want to be reminded of those dark days of death, social distancing and isolation from those we loved? So it’s interesting that London’s Donmar Warehouse has chosen to put on a play partly set during that particular time and which uses the pandemic as a device to bring two very different women closer together.

Evening All Afternoon by Anna Ziegler (The Janeiad, Photograph 51, The Wanderers) is being given its world premiere by the impressive leadership team of Tim Sheader and Henny Finch at the Donmar. This small West End theatre’s ambition is to find plays that will appeal to younger audiences and that will grow future generations of passionate theatregoers, and it nudges that demographic by offering discounted tickets to those 35 and under. This production definitely works for younger members of those seated around the intimate stage but arguably, it ultimately offers more notes to those who have lived and experienced more of what life throws at us.

Writer Ziegler has neatly constructed a drama based on human connection, exploring the themes of grief, loss and mother/daughter relationships. The feelings of isolation, fear and missing loved ones are heightened by it being set during part of the latest pandemic. The setup is a simple and often-used one: set in London, Jennifer is about to marry Delilah’s father, and they are so different from each other that they start from a position of instant dislike. Jennifer is a mature British woman, straight-laced and conservative, with humility, self-deprecation and the best witty lines. She has had a quiet life with few friends and a dull but necessary job looking after medical records. Her relationship with her mother, recently deceased, has been the main one in her life up until now. Brooklyn-raised Delilah is about to become Jennifer’s stepdaughter, and she hates the thought of her liberal father, John, replacing her dead mother with this buttoned-up and much older English spinster. Delilah is prickly and defiant, an articulate history student, deliberately taunting the woman who has been chosen by her father to help her recover from the loss of her young and vibrant Jamaican mom. Jennifer is hoping to create a functioning and loving family unit, perhaps to replace the one she has recently lost following the death of her own mother. The marriage happens shortly after their first uncomfortable meeting, and the pair are eventually thrust together by the circumstances of Covid rules. Throughout the play there is the absence of John, so his feelings and actions are simply referenced and perceived differently by Jennifer and Delilah, using the medium of long monologues to reveal their innermost thoughts. Pandemic loneliness and suppressed grief trigger a mental illness episode for Delilah and allow Jennifer a moment to reach out to her. Ziegler’s story touches those who have lost parents. It helps us remember what it is like to care for people who once cared for us. How infuriating, critical and demanding parents can be, but also how funny, wise and understanding they often are. Each loved one’s death leaves a hole in the world, and the result is a shared experience for the two protagonists which eventually brings them closer in spite of their obvious differences.

This engrossing two-handed show brings together the talents of Anastasia Hille (Othello, The Winter’s Tale, The Dark and Morphic Resonance) and Erin Kellyman (28 Years Later, Eleanor the Great). Both actors are always on in this lively production. Hille is a well-seasoned stage performer, and Kellyman is stepping on the stage for the first time, having developed her skills in film and television previously. Hille makes the perfect prudish Jennifer, dressed in sensible shoes, comfortable casuals and cardigans. She has wonderfully expressive eyes that dart about the stage as she delivers her surprisingly confessional soliloquies with a sort of impishness that probably got Jennifer noticed by her younger, new husband. She also balances this with a calmness and air of experience as the older woman when her character tries to counsel her newly acquired daughter through troubling times. Kellyman makes a confident theatre debut as Delilah in American City Jeans, athleisure attitude and sneakers. She has a luminous quality that draws the eye to her during her inner monologue sections and brings a fresh, dynamic range to Delilah’s voice and feelings. She moves seamlessly from loathing to loving and imbues Delilah with believable human failings and self-realisation. Both actors use their emotional accessibility to deliver absorbing and sympathetic renderings of women touched by bereavement and mental pain.

Director Diyan Zora (Roots, English, Lysistrata) is also making her first creative appearance at the Donmar. As a young playwright herself, she brings an understanding of the humour within the text as well as helping the actors expose the right levels of emotion, sometimes contained and sometimes unrestrained. She also brings in some polite and tender shadow puppetry to tell key parts of the reflective storyline. Zora uses the Donmar’s intimate space and set designer Basia Bińkowska‘s stark and simple blue-themed surroundings to the play’s advantage, pulling its audience straight into the duelling and complementary narratives conveying each character’s journey. There is a lovely flow that comes from the way the actors move around the stage. The carpenters have built a substantial set within the confined space so that each actor can revolve and interact with the other, cleverly using a turntable set into the cold blue floor to create the sense of time passing as each brittle meeting between stepmother and daughter occurs. There is a shelf at the back holding the possessions passed on to Jennifer by her late mother and a couple of chairs on either side of the area. There is also a small rectangular nook, revealed by a sliding door set into the wooden backdrop, high enough to need a ladder to reach it and spartan enough to become the roof to which Delilah escapes during the early days of the pandemic. The lighting, conceived by Natasha Chivers, contrasts the vast palettes of blues blocked across the stage with a series of symbolic pendant lights that come down from the Donmar’s ceiling to highlight Delilah’s inner turmoil as she slips away from reality and starts describing how she talks with her dead mother. With each lighting change, our focus gets pushed to the new speaker and their point of view as they struggle to connect. The play’s subtle soundscape has been created by composer Adam Cork. It is almost imperceptible to the ear, recognising that it needs to underpin the voices rather than swamp them.

Ziegler’s latest play is a perceptive exploration of the emotional ties between mothers and daughters that will resonate with all women in the audience. This Donmar production manages to find the good, bad and ugly in some snapshots of those relationships and the lasting effects they can have on the living. The highly relatable acting is superb on every level. However, the reflective final scene jars somewhat as the coda to this piece, following all the feelings that have been unleashed during the show, and Evening All Afternoon ends up leaving the audience with very few takeaways as a consequence.