Dixon and Daughters - Dorfman, National Theatre

Going next Sat. Seems to be 90 mins with no interval

I wish they'd be upfront about likely running times. With pretty much any play, I can tell by the number of pages in a playtext what the ball-park running time is going to be. Why can't the National?

They will have known from the get-go that this was a no-interval affair somewhere between 75 and 105 minutes, and not a two-act 2-hour-plus event. Knowing that would have been really useful. I wouldn't have bothered booking an expensive hotel and would have got the last train home.

No-one is expecting accurate predictions before performances begin, but some information would be helpful. Something like: "We cannot give a running time until performances begin but initial expecations are that the show duration is likely to be between x and y minutes."

My funds for indulging my theatre-going hobby are not unlimited, so yes I think it would be considerate if theatres, not just the NT, could pass on as much information as they have as soon as possible, with whatever caveats they need, so that people don't unnecessarily waste money. Sorry if that makes me sound entitled, but, if it does, so be it. It's not easy or cheap trying to see London theatre when you don't live there.

The NT doesn't even publish running times after a show has started, witness this one.

Completely agree. Bugger all entitled about it. Booking a theatre trip when you live well away from London takes considerable planning, not to mention the fact it's now absurdly expensive even without hotels, trains and/or air fares to factor in.

I suspect that what we have here is different opinions between those who live in London and those who don't.

No-one's expecting bang-on estimates at this stage. +/-15 minutes would do.

What did you think of the play?

Interesting that Brid Brennan is in the Dorfman, having been one of the original cast of Dancing at Lughnasa at the Abbey and then at the NT Lyttelton in 1991, where she gave a phenomenally poignant and moving performance as Agnes, and won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress when it went to New York. Reason enough to see this.

Really interested to read your review jr . This production has really flown under the radar for me. Sounds like it will be a hard sell for the NT (though having said that, the previews look like they've sold pretty well.)

I know Brid Brennan and she is a fabulous actress and a lovely person.

I thought it was very well acted overall and intense. Some good jokes surprisingly as well

Saw this last night, and although there are programmatic and predictable elements, I was gripped by the sheer intensity of it, and Brid Brennan's central character is brilliantly written and acted.

Some spoilers follow. . .

I don't think the purpose of a piece like this is to deter abusers, but rather to understand what happens to everyone around them. By the time this story begins, the abusive father is dead.

The set-up is that Mum, Mary (Brid Brennan), is coming home from six months in prison, and she's got a lot of animosity for the daughters who didn't visit, and the stepdaughter whose testimony put her away.

This is not an Agatha Christie style whodunnit, but a Colombo style whydunnit, a consideration not of who is guilty, but how guilty, a study of denial, coping behaviour and survival.

The style of the piece is very "2:22" horror, with the set, Mum's house, emitting clanking and piercing musical cues between scenes to suggest horrible secrets concealed therein, a house haunted by history. This significantly ups the intensity.

As with 2:22, characters are in different degrees of denial about whether and how haunted the house is, but the director and sound designer leave the audience in no doubt.

The only question is when and how many horrors crawl out of the woodwork, and the main body of the play builds to the moment they do. . .

Brennan's Mum character is pivotal: a twisted version of Aunt Maggie Faraway, her character in "The Ferryman," similarly blank about the past, similarly carrying potential for lucidity, but lost not in the fog of Alzheimers, but in the depths of denial. Where Aunt Maggie was benign, Mother Mary is bitter.

Brennan is remarkable in the role, a Lady Macbeth who has washed her hands so many times, she half believes they are clean, and she's damn well going to savage anyone who suggests, or even reminds her, that they might not be.

Just about the only person Brennan's Mary isn't bitter about is her fellow jailbird, Leigh, who she invites into the family home, to the consternation of her daughters. Posy Sterling's Leigh is so childlike and upfront, such a welcome contrast to everybody else, that she is a scarce and welcome source of comic relief.

I felt the entire cast were strong, but Brennan and Sterling were my highlights, and the ironic warmth of their surrogate mother-daughter relationship was well realised.

Ultimately, this play plays out quite predictably, but it is intense, illuminating, funny at times, and ultimately what fascinates the most is not the devil we know, but the details we don't.

3 and a half stars from me.

Does anyone have any idea why the calendar has this playing until 17th June, but the links don't exist, and on the 10th June is listed as the final performance? Have a gap 17th but unfortunately I think it's an error;

www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/whats-on-by-date/?month=2023-06&viewType=list