JADAR

★★★★☆

Author Ali Smith has been shortlisted four times for the Booker Prize, and has won the Goldsmiths Prize, Costa Best Novel Award, Orwell Prize and the Women’s Prize, among other awards. Booker Prize shortlisted Autumn is the first of her Seasonal Quartet – a series of four stand-alone novels (though all interconnected) which are united by the theme of time. Set against the backdrop of the 2016 Brexit referendum, Autumn profiles the unlikely friendship between 30-something-year-old Elisabeth and centenarian Daniel. Harry McDonald’s adaptation, directed by Charlotte Vickers, with set and costume by Grace Vennung and lighting by Ali Hunter, masterfully brings the story to life on the stage.

Opening with Rebecca Banatvala as Elisabeth and Gary Lisburn as Daniel Gluck in conversation, McDonald’s play starts as it means to go on: with human connection and story telling in the spotlight.

Instead of profiling Daniel asleep and dreaming, as Smith’s novel starts, we see him tell an alternative version of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. He is animated when he urges Elisabeth to rethink stories that are “set in stone”. Despite the bleak setting the 2016 referendum has prescribed, this is a play of hope. 

Art, as in Smith’s novel, underpins Vickers’ play. It returns repeatedly to scenes of Elisabeth reading Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities while Daniel sleeps in his care home bedroom. Cleverly, he is positioned off-stage. With Elisabeth, the audience quietly wills him to wake up too. Scenes in the care home are set in the present day, whereas much of the story ranges through periods in the past and Elisabeth’s memories.

Neatly, McDonald omits mention of traditional measures of time from scenes in the care home. Instead of minutes and hours, our place in time is bookmarked only by progress through A Tale of Two Cities’ chapters. When she returns home after each visit, Elisabeth’s Mum asks, “Where did you get to today?” Banatvala plays out scenes in the care home sweetly – Elisabeth is unbridled, irked only by the nurse (a wholly entertaining character) who asks her to pay Daniel’s medical fees. The notion that the final years of old age might be tracked by progress through a book, is just one of the comforting ideas that the play does so well to communicate. 

Equally encouraging is Sophie Ward’s playing of Elisabeth’s Mum, who at first appears abrasive, decidedly (and rightly so) put-out by the referendum result. Her character moves from snarky remarks about Brexiteers in the local village and gloomy comments about xenophobic graffiti, to a firm determination.

Come the end of the play, she takes action, breaking an electric fence that has been erected on the village common. The shift in character happens after she meets a love interest – a celebrity from an antiques TV show she took part in, and seemingly a motivating presence. On stage together, they are gleeful and energetic, pushing childish.

A stand-out moment was when Elisabeth found them high on “dope”. In an amusing role-reversal, Elisabeth tries to act disapproving, stood over them on the sofa, but is in fact glad that her mum has found someone. For the audience, the character of Elisabeth’s Mother underscores the power and necessity of human connection. 

At times, energetic performance eclipses what could have been tender moments (perhaps to show allegiance to Smith’s writing, which tackles complex topics with a lighter hand). But generally, humorous moments in the play were enjoyable. A special mention goes to Nancy Crane, who took on a variety of characters – the care home nurse, as guard near the fence in the common, and Elisabeth’s Mum’s partner. Near the beginning, she plays an assistant on a Post Office counter too, and rejects Elisabeth’s passport. Her side-stepped circles around the counter, and repositioning of the perspex screen to place it in-between herself and Elisabeth, were particularly funny.

Daniel’s closing words, and the final lines of the play, are encapsulating. “Nice to see you. What are you reading?”, he asks Elisabeth when he finally rouses. All along, friendship, art, and storytelling are what have endured.

Autumn runs at Park Theatre (PARK90) until November 2.

Photo: Harry Elletson