Trafalgar Studios London – until 18 November 2017. Reviewed by Catherine Françoise
4 ****
APOLOGIA is Alexia Kave Campbell’s third play and second incarnation here in London after first being seen in 2009. It also marks the return of American actress Stockard Channing to the West End stage after a decade. There’s no denying her strong and charismatic presence as world renown professional art historian Kristin Miller reaching her sixth decade and known for her lifelong radical left wing views and demonstrations outside Grosvenor House and in Paris in the politically charged 1960s. She still has a portrait of Karl Marx hanging above the loo in her bathroom.
Alongside all of this she has been a wife, a mother and a divorcee who lost custody of her two young sons at an early age and it is in the domestic setting of her homely kitchen, rather than what has defined her public life that we meet her. Her sons are coming to dinner to celebrate her 60th birthday with their respective partners and as the evening unfolds we discover that in recently published memoirs of her life, neither of her sons are mentioned at all. Tensions rise. Campbell explores the damage caused within family by all sorts of decisions made for the best reasons at the time. As is always the case with hindsight, things seem much clearer and simpler in retrospect, and the damage wrecked by an unintentionally neglectful mother to her now two adult sons, has also inflicted its own damage on her.
There is wit and compassion and gentle observation but I found the play to be a little disjointed and forced in places. Whilst activism and conviction is admirable, unbelievable rudeness to those who do not share similar views is not and there is a jarring disconnect between wanting better for people in general yet treating those standing in your kitchen with absolute disdain, which is what Kristin Miller does to her son’s partners. But Campbell’s characters are well cast with Channing magnificent as Kristin at the centre, with an unstoppable array of fierce, droll jibes. She also elicits sympathy from us as she struggles to understand why her sons have been so badly affected when she always acted with the very best of intentions both for them and society as a whole.
Joseph Millson impresses playing both of Kristin’s sons (banker Peter and depressive writer Simon). Millson is superb and particularly profound playing Simon who has been completely broken by his mother’s abandonment as a child. The scene between mother and son was especially poignant and extremely moving. Laura Carmichel playing Peter’s girlfriend Trudi is outstanding, warm, intelligent, open and multifaceted. Freema Agyeman is fearless and gutsy as Simon’s soap actress girlfriend, despised by his mother. Desmond Barrit as long-time family friend articulates a warm and genuine vision for a better world that fuelled protests and demos of the tempestuous 60s. Thoughtfully directed by Jamie Lloyd, Channing leads a superb cast in Campbell’s sharp, witty, insightful play.