Often painfully funny writing collides with the traumatic prospect of a marital split in David Eldridge’s Middle at the National Theatre
“I don’t think they have conscious uncoupling in Essex. Unconscious coupling yes…”
First there was a Beginning, and now there is a Middle. We’re 12 or so years into a well-heeled marriage and the thrill of tipsy late-night fish finger sandwiches has given way to insomnia-driven mugs of hot milk at 4 in the morning. And pretty soon we’re well aware that Maggie is gearing up for a tricky, potentially life-altering conversation with husband Gary.
Middle isn’t a formal sequel to Beginning, but rather the second instalment in a loosely conceived trilogy from David Eldridge about the life cycle of relationships. And played out over 100 uninterrupted minutes, he probes into the dissatisfaction of middle age and the marital discord it can provoke, with an unsparing dissection of how disappointments eat us from the inside. Continue reading “Review: Middle, National Theatre”