"Having the Last Word". Burton Taylor Studio.
There are moments in Jessica Tabraham’s new play Having the Last Word when the characters open their hearts to each other, albeit briefly, to say what they feel, not what they ought to say. At these points it opens its heart to the audience too, and it is touching, truthful and valedictory. Mary (Wren Talbot-Ponsonby) is a dying woman in a hospice. Her partner Jo (Esme Rhodes) understands that Mary, in her final days, needs to talk to people from her past, and so she conjures them up for her as visitors: the man who used to run the corner shop, a primary school teacher, her ex-husband, an old friend. Are they truly coming to see her, or are they figments of a shared imagination? Possibly somewhere between the two. Her ex-husband seems real enough, still full of recrimination and self-pity even as the mother of his son sits on her death-bed. Other guests seem more like ghosts of weddings past. The sequence of visits is staid, controlled, conversational. These are not occasions for stun...