Review: Apologia, Bush Theatre

REVIEW
A mask is ever-present in the intimate kitchen of Marxist art-historian Kristin Miller. It's an actual mask not a metaphorical one but it serves both purposes well. For this is a family gathering and, as such, masks are the dress of choice.

Until they are cast aside for more brutal party games, of course.

The intimate Bush Theatre and the beautiful staging by Peter McKintosh ensures we're all invited to the bitter-sweet gathering at which waspish Sixties radical Kristin reunites with the sons she has studiously ignored in her newly-published memoir Apologia.

("It means a formal, written defence of one's opinions or conduct," insists Kristin. "Not to be confused with an apology.")

Kristin remains firm to her political principles despite the sheer, bloody anger exhibited by banker son Peter (Tom Beard) and the softer, more troubled, dissection of her failings by Simon (John Light).

He asks of her "Where were you?" and she disingenuously recounts some crossed wire which left young Simon at a station, alone and abandoned.

"No, I mean, where were you? Where were you?"

Kristin, with blazing intellect, is able to skip through the minefield of her sons' recriminations. She is controlling, dextrous and rarely cornered. At any given moment, she will revive to an earlier slight to restore her adrenaline and she's never beyond an elegant cheapshot to deflect focus.

As played by the wonderful Paola Dionisotti, Kristin is mesmeric and charismatic. As brittle, fragile and sharp as a cracked champagne flute. And if there were any doubt about her formidability, Kristin's camp chum Hugh (Philip Voss) is on hand to paint a portrait of Kristin in her Sixties heyday - so caught up storming the barricades that maternal love came a distant second.

Alexi Kaye Campbell's play is delightfully funny, well-acted and smoothly directed. The dinner scene, for example, is a picture perfect evocation of communal family consumption.

Director Josie Rourke has the characters talking across one another, flinging wild non-sequiturs while a telling remark is lost in the banal confusion of passing this plate and that dish. Wonderful stuff.

Each of the players has their moment - Claire (Nina Sosanya) defends her career as soap actress with a redoubtable setpiece to silence Kristin's concert of sly digs and fragile Simon is given ample space to tell a tale of neglect and confusion.

Yet, despite all the forensic attempts to unpick Kristin's defences, it is left to Peter's guileless fiancée Trudi (Sarah Goldberg), a pert Pollyanna, to skewer the grande dame.

And, while the final reckoning has a chilling air of predictability about it, there is still something sudden, satisfying and visceral about the moment the mask finally slips.

- Go to bushtheatre.co.uk for ticket details