Review: The Long Road, Soho Theatre

Written for WhatsOnStage.com

Newspapers trot out the facts and figures of knife crime on a seemingly daily basis. What little we see of the people affected by such momentary murders reduces to ill-fitting labels and quotations of despair. Shelagh Stephenson’s The Long Road serves a desperate and poignant reminder that no one is just another statistic; that, while the media is quick to forget, the damage caused stretches far beyond the life lost.

In the aftermath of 18 year-old Danny’s death, his family are in turmoil: a chorus of grief scavenging for meaning. While his father John (Michael Elwyn) turns to the numbness of incessant jogging and whiskey, his mother Mary (Denise Black) seeks some unknown comfort in contacting his killer, Emma Price (Michelle Tate). Their imprisonment is one of confused sorrow, filled with a muddle of retaliation, retribution and small acts of repair.

Stephenson’s script is a deft work elevated by its first-rate cast into something simple, honest and forcefully profound. Her timely use of vulnerable humour takes the edge off its grand statements of grief, grounding every character with a soft pathos. While the text’s directness occasionally tips into an outside perspective, for the most part it is affecting and penetrating.

Director Esther Baker cleverly avoids navel-gazing, rattling through the text at breakneck speed with diligent sensitivity to rhythm. In playing in traverse, she sets a chasm between burdened family and troubled killer, the crossing of which seems both brave and territorially invasive.

Moreover, she coaxes fine performances from a tremendous cast. Black is utterly captivating in her private turbulence, caught in a rational awareness of irrational emotions. Michelle Tate constructs a fortress of quick-fire words around a touching vulnerability and, as Danny’s older brother, Steven Webb is a master of the tear-stained smile; cracking jokes even as he gulps down a lump in the throat.

Powerful, urgent and sincere, The Long Road is a seldom heard voice of vital humanity.