The Height of the Storm

C+

You may remember a play by Florian Zeller from a few seasons back, The Father, starring Frank Langella as an older man named Andre sinking into dementia. It captured the fractured nature of the experience and provided a great role for Langella. Now Manhattan Theatre Club has imported, virtually intact, the West End production of another Zeller play about a different elderly man with an increasingly tenuous relationship to reality. As if to imply that it is a riff on the earlier play, the play’s central character is again named Andre and again has daughters named Anne (Amanda Drew) and Elise (Lisa O’Hare, the only actor new to the cast). One important difference is that this Andre has a wife of 50 years named Madeleine. The fact that Andre and Madeleine are played by Olivier winners Jonathan Pryce and Eileen Atkins is the main reason to see this elusive drama. There is a death in the family. Depending on which scene you are watching, your perception of who it is that died may shift. Andre was a noted author whose papers Anne is searching in the hope of finding a rumored diary. Madeleine meets a woman (Lucy Cohu) who claims to have been close to Andre many years before when he and his alleged friend Georges founded a literary journal and invites her for tea. Andre denies any knowledge of Georges. Anne is separating from her husband. Her younger sister Elise, who has a history of poor choices in men, introduces her new beau (James Hillier), who may or may not be an estate agent scheming to get Andre to sell his house. A floral arrangement arrives without a card. Anne’s perusal of the found diary provides shocking information that involves Georges. Andre finds the card that got separated from the flowers and reacts strongly. Unfortunately neither the contents of the diary nor the message on the card are shared with the audience. There is a touch of Pinter in Zeller’s technique.  Each time the scrim descended between scenes, the lady next to me asked whether the play had ended. The good news is that both Pryce and Atkins are at the top of their form, so if your primary goal is to see them in action, you will not be disappointed. However, if you do not like puzzlers that force you to make up your own version of the story, you will be frustrated. Judging from British reviews, many found the play extremely moving. Alas, I am not one of them. Anthony Ward’s set and costumes are evocative. Jonathan Kent’s direction is assured. Running time: one hour 20 minutes; no intermission. It seemed longer.