Whilst The Inheritance took audiences by storm, it has taken a little while for Matthew López’s 2015 play Reverberation to make its way to our shores. Bristol Old Vic hosts the European premiere, which has been reset in England to great effect, making the most of the comic potential in the American/British culture clash between Claire (Eleanor Tomlinson) and Jonathan (Michael Ahomka-Lindsay). As one would expect with López’s work, the play is persistently, charmingly funny – and unflinching in its treatment of grief and loneliness.
The play centres around Jonathan, who has become isolated in the wake of a great personal tragedy, but is slowly drawn back into a kind of life by brash, untethered Claire. It is a play that hinges on the two main performances, and how much we believe in their growing love for one another, and both Ahomka-Lindsay and Tomlinson rise fully to the occasion. Ahomka-Lindsay’s Jonathan is sincere and grounded, with jagged bursts of visceral grief. The sadness that haunts Tomlinson’s vivacious performance is brought to full force towards the end of the first half, where she reacts with quiet, haunting devastation to the story that Jonathan tells her. Although we’ve already half-guessed at the explanation by the time it comes, the fallout is played beautifully, the aftermath allowed to quietly sit.
Ti Green’s set design has transparent walls in the stairwell and around the doors of Jonathan’s apartment, making explicit the illusion of privacy, the impossibility of complete seclusion, in a building where everyone can overhear everyone’s business. The set works well, with the parallel lives in the upstairs and downstairs apartments played against each other to great effect. There are thematic overlaps with All of Us Strangers (Andrew Haigh, 2023) here, with its preoccupations around queer and urban loneliness, but also with the block of flats as somewhere where loneliness can be both accentuated and disrupted. The places where we live are always resonant with meaning, and for Jonathan, Claire’s flat – where he lived before tragedy disrupted his life – represents his former life, the locus of his grief, a barrier which he cannot bear to pass through.
There are imperfect moments – occasionally transitions feel slightly jerky, Jack Gibson’s Wes takes a moment to find his footing before a heart-rending performance in the second act, the wall projections are occasionally obtrusive – but these are minor quibbles. Reverberation is heavy with longing, and, however much we laugh along the way, that is what we are left with. An absence, an ache.
Playwright: Matthew López
Directed by: Jack Sain
Cast: Eleanor Tomlinson, Michael Ahomka-Lindsay, Jack Gibson
Until: 2 November 2024