'The Height of the Storm': Cloudy but powerful

‘THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM’: Eileen Atkins & Jonathan Pryce. Photo: Joan Marcus

THE HEIGHT OF THE STORM
Written by Florian Zeller
Translated by Christopher Hampton
Directed by Jonathan Kent
Through November 24, 2019
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
261 West 47th Street
(212-239-6200),www.manhattantheatreclub.com

By David NouNou

Florian Zeller is a French novelist and playwright whose previous plays include The Father (which played at the Samuel J. Friedman in 2016, with a Tony Award-winning performance from Frank Langella). Earlier this year, Isabelle Huppert was in Mr. Zeller’s The Mother Off Broadway. There is a thread that runs through Mr. Zeller’s plays where death and dementia play a major character. From a pretentious standpoint, it is equivalent to a haunting character that comes in and goes out between scenes, but stripped from the haunting aspect, it is a deep and disturbing reality that all the elderly and their families face together.

Set in present-day Paris in a house in the country, Andre (Jonathan Pryce) is in a dazed and agitated state and is staring out the kitchen window while his older daughter, Anne (Amanda Drew) is going over his papers and discussing what to do with his diaries while he remains mute. She also brings forward the fact that he unable to live alone in this big house, when Madeline (Eileen Atkins) Andre’s wife of 50 years walks in, with their younger daughter Elise (Lisa O’Hare). She goes on preparing mushrooms for lunch, and Andre goes over the ingredients for this delightful dish that they substituted for meat. This conversation goes on for a while where we have to decide which one of them is dead, is it Andre or Madeline?

It becomes frustrating deciphering these scenes, because every time it goes in one direction, the other character pops up. It’s Mr. Zeller’s way of showing us how people with dementia deal with death and family. He plays these two subjects almost as ghosts. The subject matter is heady and so many families face these problems every day.

What grounds this thin 80-minute drama is the nuanced performance of Eileen Atkins as Madeline, the strong, indomitable force that anchors Andre throughout their 50-year marriage. She is willful, and for all intents and purposes, the proverbial “last man” standing.

Jonathan Pryce gives another powerful performance; his agitated state, his rambling repetitious sentences are heartbreaking and terrifying. Although he was the personality in the marriage, in the longer run he is the terrified and weaker of the two. Their performances give life to the memory of a powerful subject, overshadowing and outliving an otherwise weak play of gimmicks.

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published September 26, 2019
Reviewed at September 25, 2019 press performance.