Photo/Manuel Harlan
To put it plainly, there’s a lot going on – yet none of it is presented in any sort of convoluted way and all of it superbly portrayed – in Alexi Kaye Campbell’s play Sunset at the Villa Thalia.
Arty, middle class Charlotte (Pippa Nixon) from London and charismatic American – and CIA operative – Harvey (Ben Miles) are frenemies to the highest degree. There’s instant affinity and sometimes even smouldering attraction between them but also deep-seated belief on both sides that one completely misunderstands the other and that the other is absolutely wrong about how the world spins on its geopolitical axis.
They and their respective partners – Charlotte’s diligent if dithering playwright husband Theo (Sam Crane) and Harvey’s perpetually tipsy trophy wife June (Elizabeth McGovern) – meet on holiday in Greece and immediately hit it off, developing a decade long relationship summering together in the same idyllic island setting where first they met. Sunset looks at two evenings during those string of summers, the first and presumably last time they come together.
Photo/Manuel Harlan
The quartet – as well as the supporting but by no means minor or any less potent roles of Maria (Glykeria Dimou), Stamatis (Christos Callow) and Agape (Eve Polycarpou) and Charlotte and Theo’s children Adrian (Thomas Berry/Billy Marlow/Ethan Rouse) and Rosalind (Sophia Ally/Dixie Egerickx/Scarlett Nunes) – round out the dynamics between Charlotte and Harvey. Elizabeth McGovern is especially delightful to watch as a dingy ditz too coddled by the good life provided by Harvey to have a working moral compass and too drunk to be able to competently read one anyway.
It’s engaging stuff, and for all the ponderously political overtones and metaphorical undercurrents, it’s often a hilarious hoot.
Is Sunset a tale of moral hazard? Are we better off engaging with those with whom we fundamentally disagree or cutting ties with them as soon as we perceive they’re in the wrong – and realise the harm they’re causing others? Is the road to Hell paved with good (or at least genuinely naïve) intentions (and leading to a little house on a sleepy little Greek isle)?
Maybe. It’s all worth wondering about during and long after a performance of Sunset at the Villa Thalia, on now through 4 August 2016 at the Dorfman Theatre, National Theatre located at Upper Ground, South Bank, SE1 9PX. Find out more at nationaltheatre.org.uk.
