Duncan Macmillan is not the first dramatist to tackle addiction. What gives his new play exceptional vibrancy, though, is its decision to draw parallels between rehab and theatrical process, and to present the action from the addict’s point of view. It helps that his protagonist is an actor, superlatively played by Denise Gough.
She is the drugs-and-drink driven Emma, whom we first see breaking down during a production of The Seagull and then checking into a rehab clinic. First comes the detox and then the trickier stage of group therapy, in which the restlessly intelligent Emma spurns the whole concept of shared confessions: one of the play’s suavest ironies is that the role play and soul-baring that Emma rejects are similar to the ones she would normally adopt in her chosen career. But Macmillan also offers a critique of a society in which addiction is partly a response to the surrounding chaos, and where the generic uplift of marketing-speak pervades everything from politics to religion.
One of the questions the play poses, as Emma confronts her family and the routine rejections of her profession, is how the recovered addict can be expected to cope with the outside world.
It is Gough, however, who holds the play together. She breathtakingly captures Emma’s mix of dependency, delusion and scepticism: she never judges the character but plays her from her own point of view as a woman whose vulnerability is matched by a lone-wolf obduracy. It is an astonishing performance much aided by Jeremy Herrin’s vivid Headlong production, in which the stage at one point teems with multiple Emmas, by Bunny Christie’s white-tiled design; and by sterling support from Barbara Marten as a group therapist and Emma’s mum, and from Nathaniel Martello-White as a deeply sympathetic fellow patient.
- At the Dorfman, London, until 4 November. Box office: 020-7452 3000.
