Doonreagan, Jermyn Street Theatre - theatre review

Even those who are not familiar with the poetry of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath know a thing or two about their doomed relationship and, 50 years after Plath's suicide, this lurid fascination with the pair shows no sign of abating. Doonreagan at least comes at the over-familiar material from a refreshingly unexplored angle: it focuses on the brief time in 1966 that Hughes spent with his married lover Assia Wevill, for whom he had left Plath, at Doonreagan House in rural Connemara.

The premise might be willing but the execution is weak. Ann Henning Jocelyn, the current owner of Doonreagan no less, has crafted a painfully slight two-hander that struggles to establish and then sustain the tempestuous dynamic between Hughes (Daniel Simpson) and Wevill (Flora Montgomery).

Included in a running time of a mere 50 minutes in Alex Dmitriev’s production are some astonishing longueurs between scenes, while Montgomery changes into yet another of her fetching array of woollen cardigans. During these periods of nothingness, all we can do is gaze at the projected photographs of the idyllic Doonreagan landscape and allow our minds to drift idly to thoughts of a holiday in Ireland.

What Henning Jocelyn does manage to capture is the unshakeable egocentricity of the artist; it comes as little surprise to be reminded that Wevill ultimately subjected herself, and her small daughter, to the same end as Plath. Simpson, a lowering and forceful presence, does at least look and sound something like Hughes, even if at times he is saddled with lines that sound rather like bad pastiches of his own poetry.

The curse of all bio-dramas — of couples telling each other things they surely must already know, in this case about Wevill’s childhood escape from Nazi Germany — descends at points here. It’s hard not to laugh at poor Montgomery when she has to ask the scribbling Hughes: “Tell me what you’re writing about. Is it fish again? Salmon — or perhaps pike?” Yet she has a warm life-force about her that, for a few brief moments, suggests happier days ahead for the couple.

Until Sept 21 (020 7287 2875, jermynstreettheatre.co.uk)