The Unbelievers

This is a gripping and heart-felt production directed with clarity and compassion by Marianne Elliot is a welcome return for writer Nick Payne. Known for his non-linear style this latest play is packed with emotion and tension. A story that refuses to let go through its 105 minutes.

The play is truly Miriam’s story, a mother whose teenage son Oscar has vanished leaving her fractured and stuck between hope and total breakdown. Nicola Walker leads the production with a performance that is raw, vulnerable, and frighteningly human. Her performance grabs your attention and never gives up for an instant.

What makes the play so compelling is its honesty. It refuses to deal in big dramatic twists or tidy answers. Instead, it focusses in on the messy confusing reality of grief and desperate need to keep believing that her son is out there somewhere. Walker delivers this superbly. Balancing sharp humour and emotional collapse in a way that never feels forced.

Her two ex-husbands Benjamin (Harry Kershaw) Karl (Martin Marquez), and her children David (Paul Higgins) and Margaret (Ella Lily Hyland) add much to the plays believability with beautifully textured performances throughout the plays highly charged domestic moments There’s awkward laughter, simmering frustration, and tiny acts of kindness, all the little details that make the family seem real.

Bunny Christie’s slick minimal staging, enhanced with shifting scenes and moments from Jack Knowles’s lighting and Nicola T Chang’s sound designs, reflect Miriam’s fractured state of mind, but never gets in the way of the story.

If there is a fault, a few scenes wander, but even when it does that, it’s the emotional truth that stays strong. The show leaves you thinking how we ever move forward when life leaves a gaping hole to be filled.

Ultimately The Unbelievers is moving, relatable and incredibly thought-proking. And you can believe me when I say worth fighting for a ticket in what is heading for a sell-out production.


Photo credit: Brink Moegenburg.