June 23, 2026: Theatre Yesterday and Today, by Ron Fassler

While in London recently for the global premiere of Your Fault, a new film directed by my daughter Charlotte Fassler (yes—that is a plug), I also managed to squeeze in six theatre excursions: four revivals consisting of two American musicals (High Society and Avenue Q), British playwright Peter Shaffer’s (Equus), and French playwright and director Florian Zeller’s The Truth, (La Vérité). New plays included David Hare’s Grace Pervades, starring Ralph Fiennes, and Care, a devastating new drama at the Young Vic, written and directed by Alexander Zeldin. Not even on my radar, I was led to Care by a Facebook acquaintance who, upon discovering I was in town, reached out to say it was absolutely not to be missed. So, I took his word and bought a ticket right away proving that sometimes a good theatre tip can pay-off like a winning pony.

Care, by Alexander Zeldin.

When you enter the Young Vic Theatre, there’s an intentional and inescapable feeling of being trapped inside its retirement facility setting, same as its residents whom we will come know. Rosanna Vize’s drab, realistic design depicts a large gathering place off the building’s entrance. This is where Joan (Linda Bassett), a bewildered, elderly woman, is anxiously awaiting her daughter and grandsons’ visit. She claims that her temporary stay is coming to an end and is excited to go home with them. We soon realize that she’s unaware of having been there a few weeks already, an ever-present issue with time that, if you’ve ever had to deal with an aging parent, is all-too familiar. Joan’s daughter Lynn (Rose Cavaliero), a recent widow, indeed arrives soon with her traumatized kids in tow; bitter teen Laurie (William Lawlor) and pre-pubescent Robbie (Ethan Mahony), who add to Joan’s confusion and agitation.

Yes, this is a downer, but one done with intelligence and compassion. It becomes increasingly impossible to not become involved with this fractured family and how death and illness are crippling their lives. Others at the facility, who are depicted, offer characterizations of searing intensity such as John (Richard Durden), a proper gentleman slowly losing his mind, and Hazel (Llewelyn Gideon), a calm, angel-like nurse. All the actors are perfection, but these two share a superb sense of what it is like to be in an environment where empathy is as necessary as air.

However, it is Linda Bassett’s lead performance that truly inspires. Not being a habitual London theatergoer, this is my first exposure to this lovely actress despite a resume studded with decades of stage work across the U.K. In learning more about her, I discovered she is not formally trained and didn’t make her London stage debut until 1982 at age thirty-two. In an interview from 2004, I was struck by Bassett’s answer to the question of why theatre is important in modern society and what she said more than twenty years ago illuminates just why she is so brilliant in Care: "It’s absolutely basic primitive human behaviour (sic) to do theatre. It’s right at the root of humanity . . . it is soul food!"

It is that primitive humanity that infuses Bassett’s glorious performance. At the end of its two-hour intermissionless running time, I sat riveted in my seat unable to move; a response I’ve only had a handful of times in the theatre. I turned to the woman next to me (we were both alone) and could feel that she was having the same experience. I asked if she wanted to have a cup of coffee or tea and discuss the play, which is exactly what we did and how I made a new friend out of Janna, from Austin, Texas.

Care is at the Young Vic Theatre through July 11th.

Equus, by Peter Shaffer.

Here’s a coincidence: One of the few plays in my lifetime that left me stuck to my seat at its conclusion was one I saw again on this London trip for the first time in more than fifty years. Back in 1974, as a seventeen-year-old, I was gob smacked by Peter Shaffer’s Tony Award-winning Best Play Equus on Broadway. It starred Anthony Hopkins and all I knew about it at the time was that it was the story of a clinical psychiatrist and his young patient; locked up for committing the heinous crime of blinding six horses with a metal spike. I was not prepared for what a brilliant psychological thriller it was, directed by John Dexter with simple, yet astonishing stagecraft. It ran three years and has only been revived on Broadway once; a 2008 production that starred Richard Griffiths, fresh off his Tony-winning turn in Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, and Daniel Radcliffe, in his Broadway debut hot off Harry Potter. Critics dismissed Equus as having aged poorly and, though I didn’t see the production, I did see the original four times (with three different leading actors). I’m convinced that the bricks thrown were most likely due to miscasting and misdirection, though Ben Brantley, then chief theatre critic of the New York Times, damned the play with faint praise by referring to it as "a sensational upper-middlebrow hit." I’m a bit fonder of the play than that and have always felt it could still work. So, when I discovered it was being revived at the intimate Menier Chocolate Factory, it was time to revisit Equus.

It also added to my curiosity that it would star Toby Stephens as Dr. Dysart; the play’s the burnt-out protagonist. Quite good two seasons ago in Lincoln Center Theater’s Corruption, by J.T. Rogers, Stephens turns out to be a fine fit for the role. As the son of Robert Stephens and Maggie Smith, the genes are there for sure and his performance as the doubting shrink is spot-on. He’s matched point for point by Noah Valentine as Alan, the boy who challenges the doctor at every turn. Lindsay Posner’s direction provides a swift kick of kinetic energy and the play’s non-gratuitous nudity (shocking in its day) still intensifies the drama and deepens its tension.

Just as its name indicates, the aged Menier once housed a chocolate factory. Built in London’s Southwark area between 1865 and 1874, it was abandoned about a hundred years later and, in 2004, converted into a 180-seat theater. It has housed dozens of productions, several of which have found their way to the West End and Broadway, among the most recent and successful, the Tony Award-winning revival of La Cage Aux Folles (2010). The space allows a proximity to the actors which serves Equus in such a way that makes this production an even more visceral experience than usual. 

Equus is at the Menier Chocolate Factory through July 4th.

Grace Pervades, by David Hare.

Having just turned seventy-nine, Sir David Hare is one of England’s most prolific playwrights. In 1970, his first produced drama, Slag, won him the Evening Standard Award for Most Promising New Playwright. He made good on that prophesy with Plenty in 1975, the first of his plays to make it to Broadway. Premiering in 1983 at Joseph Papp’s downtown Public Theater, it later moved uptown in a production Hare staged as well. He’s also appeared in one-man plays that he’s written and directed like Via Dolorosa (1999), and penned Academy Award-nominated screenplays for The Hours (2002) and The Reader (2008).

For his first new play in the West End since Straight Line Crazy (which also had a run in 2022 at the Shed in Hudson Yards), Hare is back with Grace Pervades. The marvelous Ralph Fiennes is Henry Irving (1838-1905), widely regarded as the greatest actor of the Victorian era and one of the most influential theatrical figures in British history. Plummy of voice and stiff in manner, Fiennes cuts an odd figure here, clearly having a ball with it. Irving, not quite comfortable in his own skin and only truly in his element while in costume and in character, serves both Fiennes and Hare well as they find sly ways to make sure the actor-manager gets everything he wants. Never less than courteous and cordial, Irving is often clueless to those around him but never mean-spirited. Egotistical, but not uncompromising, Fiennes makes him a dry-witted joy.

Apparently (at least according to Hare anyway), Irving was always at his best around Ellen Terry (1847-1928), his leading lady and sometime lover and herself considered one of England’s most gifted theatre artists. The Great-Aunt of John Gielgud, Terry came from a distinguished theatrical family and helped institute a naturalness and emotional truth to her roles that made her enormously popular. As portrayed by Miranda Raison, in a sensitively drawn performance with loads of good humor, Terry gives as good as she gets with Fiennes’s Irving and their interplay is the very heart of the story. "You might try looking at your actors once in a while," she suggests, much to Irving’s consternation. Their improv, in which he gives her idea a test run, is one of the play’s most amusing highlights.

Some reviews found the play a bit dull, which isn’t altogether untrue. Director Jeremy Herrin may not have been the right person for this (it cries for the creative spark of someone like Stephen Daldry), but with scenes taking place in such theatrical settings as dressing rooms, the wings, and onstage, it still provides delightful catnip for theatre lovers.

It also doesn’t hurt that the play is at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, one of the West End’s oldest and most sought-after houses. Built in 1720, this was my first time inside this historic landmark, and it did not disappoint (as you can see in the photo below, as well as in the headline above, that even the safety curtain lowered at the interval is magnificent).

Over the years (and in some of their most iconic roles), the stage has hosted John Barrymore, Ralph Richardson, Charles Laughton, Noel Coward, Vivien Leigh, Edith Evans, Donald Wolfit, John Gielgud, Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Derek Jacobi, Michael Redgrave, Helen Hayes, Peggy Ashcroft, Wendy Hiller, Alec Guinness, Jack Lemmon, Rex Harrison, Ben Kingsley, Vanessa Redgrave, Peter O’Toole, and Alan Bates among many others. That history alone made my first visit to the Theatre Royal Haymarket a charming and welcome one.

Grace Pervades is at the Theatre Royal Haymarket through July 11th.

Please check in tomorrow for Part II and for three more uniquely London theatre experiences worthy of their own column.

Ron Fassler is the author of The Show Goes On: Broadway Hirings, Firings and Replacements. For news and “Theatre Yesterday and Today" columns when they break, please subscribe.