Playhouse, Sheffield – 3 April 2025
Reviewed by Sharon Farley
5*****
As well as being the writer of this piece, Mark Farrelly (Quentin Crisp: Naked Hope, Howerd’s End, Jarman) has been performing The Silence of Snow since 2014, so it’s hardly surprising that he dons the role like a second skin. Though the performance opens with Hamilton seated, quiet and withdrawn in a medical robe, the fourth wall is rapidly demolished as Farrelly bounds into the aisles and gets up close to audience members. This shock to the system works well for him as their attention is readily surrendered, leaving Farrelly to congenially hold them in the palm of his hand to the last syllable.
Patrick Hamilton (1904-1962) was a British novelist and playwright whose name may not immediately ring a bell with you, but he inspired a term commonly used today that most certainly will: ‘gaslighting’ comes from the title of his play ‘Gas Light’ (1938), which also became a MetroGoldwyn-Mayer film that generated considerable box office numbers and high critical acclaim. Hamilton achieved success at an early age and was catapulted into the glitz of London theatre life in 1929 with his hit play ‘Rope’, later adapted for cinema by Alfred Hitchcock.
Farrelly guides us through Hamilton’s life, highlighting his background – a family of aspiring writers (“Even the cat was a novelist”), his fathers cumbersome ego, his mother’s suicide – the complex romantic relationships that inspired some of his novels, and the car accident that gave rise to his disdain of modern society. En route, Farrelly chronicles many of Hamilton’s writing achievements; fascinated by London life, much of this work was inspired by the sleaze and poverty shaping the complex characters of the infamous East End.
Hamilton’s own descent into alcoholism walks alongside throughout. Despite the many dark themes running through his life and work, Farrelly plays Hamilton with great empathy, enabling him to emerge as an engaging, humorous, and authentic soul. On seeing Patrick Hamilton brought back to life so definitively, one cannot help but be inspired to seek out his work and learn more about this fascinating writer who gained professional success but not personal stability.
As well as celebrating the life and works of Patrick Hamilton, Farrelly also uses The Silence of Snow to raise awareness of mental health issues and collect donations for MIND, raising over £15,000 in the process. This is in part attributed to the loss of a close friend, Tim Welling, to suicide, but becomes even more poignant when Farrelly reveals his own struggles with ‘the Black Dog’. I later learned that Mark’s inspiration for writing the piece came at a time he found some of Hamilton’s issues reflected in his own struggles. This made the writing of The Silence of Snow somewha hazardous to his mental health, as certain elements created a churning over of Farrelly’s own lived experience. However, as is often the case when we face our demons head on, Mark states that the exercise was ultimately cathartic. Perhaps this enabled him to.adopt the Hamilton code and ‘rise
through’.
Hopefully, Mark Farrelly will continue to share this healing salve with future audiences, helping them connect to and make sense of their own challenges with his exceptionally warm interpretation of a talented but troubled man. Watch out for it.