The Height of the Storm, starring Jonathan Pryce and Dame Eileen Atkin, is a stimulating new play written by Olivier Award winning playwright, Florian Zeller. The play delves deep into the themes of love, family, loss and old age. Showing at Wyndham’s Theatre, Covent Garden until the 1stof December. “A play that takes us to the edge of what it is to love” as said by The Times. 

André and Madeleine have been married for over 50 years and their daughters are visiting for the weekend. The scene, set on a seemingly normal Saturday, has an ambiguous air about it. Jonathan Pryce’s character, André who is a famous writer, has dementia and is increasingly becoming irritated as he begins to lose more and more of his memories and thought of his wife being supposedly gone further exacerbates this. However, Madeleine, his wife, is also shown to be recently widowed and there are also scenes of the couple dealing with conflict amidst themselves, such as the mysterious friend of André who claims to have gone way back with him. Even simple things are proving difficult for André, to separate fact from fiction in reality, due to his dementia. It touches on the emotive subject of dementia, which is a decline in mental ability, which is inflicted upon many such as André and the many obstacles that need to be overcome by loved ones, such as his two daughters.

“Those who try to understand are morons.” as said by André discourages the audience from dissecting the ending of the play but rather urges an audience to accept it and emphasises the point that in life many questions will go unanswered. Nothing is ever for certain in life which is shown in this play where alternate perspectives are shown on existence and what life can be like when a loved one is ‘gone’. The ending to this family drama is rather puzzling as we as an audience are left baffled as to the future of the loving elderly couple. An absolutely must-see play that’ll provoke in-depth thoughts of ‘what is instore for us next?’