Didn't I just review this already? Well, yes, but Belvoir and Black Swan's production has just enough different choices to make it worthy of interest, from the decision to use a set (designed by Bob Cousns) which takes a more impressionistic approach to the challenge of combining a whole house full of family members on stage (including incorporating the symbolic papered-over-windows into the set), to a relentless pace that blends the opening discrete scenes into one another, to the timing of a production of a play about the declining United States of America after the to the performance idiosyncracies of a new set of actors, from Pamela Rabe's monstrous celebration of a Violet Weston to John Howard's permasloshed Beverly, Helen Thompson's disgruntled Tammy Faye, Greg Stone's goofy Charles Aiken, Tamsin Carrol's volatile Barbara, Bert La Bonte's chagrined Bill, Amy Mathews' deglamorised Ivy, to Esther William's desperately young Jean to Bee Cruise's observant and quietly cutting Johnna.
Eamon Flack directs it with a clear head and a firm sense of place in a mostly open staging, finding points of focus around the space whether it be on a couch, at the large table during the dinner scene, at the hifi right at the centre of the stage or during one key moment played behind the set. There's an energetic heft to this and it never feels even vaguely close to the three hours 15 that it actually is, with every note of Tracey Lett's play given maximum impact. It's a powerful, strong night in the theatre and recommended for the revisit.
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