Alison’s House

Alison’s House by Susan Glaspell is set on the very last day of the nineteenth century. A rambling house that was once home to a celebrated poetess is on the point of being broken up and sold. Her surviving family pick their way through the debris, clutching ambiguous relics, concealing the evidence of old scandals. Caught between private memory and public mythology, they retell and repress their various versions of Alison’s life. Then the appearance of a young journalist with literary aspirations re-ignites the smouldering feud between old-fashioned decorum and the encroaching claims of clamorous posterity.

Jo Combes‘ sensitive production weighs the play’s competing arguments with gravity, compassion, and a sharp eye for the comedy of those quietly-maddening frictions that infest family gatherings. Mark Arends’ Eben is a portrait of high-minded weakness, his thwarted aspirations flaring into petulant fury upon contact with his stiff-necked wife’s self-righteous moral manoeuvrings. As the careworn paterfamilias, Christopher Ravenscroft takes infinite pains to protect Georgine’s Anderson’s fragile, fussy Agatha, whose sweet-old-lady dithering masks a dogged defence of the family’s dark secrets. Nicholas Gadd is bright-eyed, appealing and period-perfect as the reporter who brings the new century in on his coat-tails, and Gráinne Keenan plays the fallen-woman of the clan with a mixture of solidity, regret, stubbornness and simple pride.

Intimate in-the-round staging suits the tense, candle-lit intrigue of the play’s final act, with spectators craning over actors’ shoulders to catch a tantalising glimpse of secret, perhaps scandalous, poetic manuscripts. And if unshakeable shades of Byatt’s Possession haunt this revival, the company tackle Glaspell’s 1931 drama with unflustered confidence in its own distinct terms of engagement. Even-handed and humane, Alison’s House is another timely and thought-provoking find from The Orange Tree, unofficial London residence of forgotten dramatic gems, and quietly riveting ensemble acting.