★★★★☆
“The Breach”
📍Hampstead Theatre
🎫£12++
Ugh, I’m on a weird strike of heavy-themed plays this week. Just finished reviewing a show about Paris Attacks, and here comes “The Breach” with a dark theme of conscience, trust and loyalty, but also rape.
Quick recap: America in the ’70s.2 siblings live their life peacefully, but the brother gets bullied a lot. To make sure it doesn’t happen, they join a secret “club” which sets a HQ in their basement. One day, an ultimate challenge is raised among the club members…(I will stop here as I want to avoid spoilers)
Ok so you need to know that the topic of rape (or however you call what happened) is discussed in details here. So if it could potentially trigger you, please avoid this play.
What I liked: it gave a deeper sense of understanding od what the teenagers thought and how they see their actions later on as they grow up. Its not a perfect script but dialogues sound pretty natural, especially when the teenagers speak. There’s a huge pressure on the actors, because the stage is literally bare so there’s no place to hide or drag the attention away from the performance.
What I was not a fan of were these moments when you could really feel that they seem a bit off, more like a dream: there’s a repetitive sequence of the siblings playing a game and imagining their father’s suicide fall. It was a bit of a scratch for me on the otherwise scarily realistic play.
I have to praise Shannon Tarbet for her role and the way she handled a harsh yet complex personality of Jude. Hope to see her in some more plays very soon!
Details
Written by Naomi Wallace
Directed by Sarah Frankcom
Running time: 2 hours and 10 minutes, including an interval
Ticket price:£12-£30, £10 concs
Dates
6 May – 4 June 2022
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