This review was originally written for The Reviews Hub: https://www.thereviewshub.com/the-gathered-leaves-park-theatre-london/

It is an Easter weekend that the Pennington family will remember in this gripping and powerful family drama, as The Gathered Leaves returns makes a successful return to Park Theatre.

17 years after the Penningtons last shared the same room, the family, now with grandchildren in tow, reconvene over one desperately intense Easter weekend to mark domineering patriarch William’s birthday. What follows, however, is a fierce tussle between the family’s generations, gripped by the return of outcast daughter Alice (Olivia Vinall) and the shock of William’s (Jonathan Hyde) vascular detention diagnosis.

The play itself is set in 1997 against the backdrop of the impending Labour landslide election win. It feels very apt timing given the seismic shifts in the Pennington family, with William’s ‘old order’ slowly, painfully, eroding within a family that appears to be struggling to stop itself from completely disintegrating.

Hyde’s portrayal of the fierce, and fiercely outdated, patriarch William is superb. Hyde’s poise in this role, each step carrying the gravitas of his familial position, is dominant. Hyde, like the rest of the cast, and the piece’s script more generally, works best when the entire family descends upon the living room. There is a quiet, though not always, power to Hyde’s William, though this loses a little of its impact in a second half that feels a little more stuttered.

Chris Larkin’s Giles Pennington and Joanne Pearce’s Olivia, as William’s eldest son and wife respectively, bear the brunt of William’s cruelties, and both balance well the longstanding impact of his behaviour upon their characters while also fuelling their performances with enough rage in their attempts to push back. As Giles, Larkin’s fragility as the eldest son, grappling with his father but also his vulnerable brother and collapsing marriage to Sophie (Zoë Waites), is crafted effectively, while Pearce’s Olivia roars in her fiery retorts to her husband’s actions.

A lot is made of Samuel Pennington’s autism in the play, and this is delivered with careful sensitivity and authenticity by Richard Stirling. Stirling’s subtle gestures, vocal quirks and interactions with the other characters demonstrate the great care Keatley’s script takes to portray Samuel’s condition, while also building a moving relationship with doting brother Giles. There are moments of friction, primarily through Waites’ oddly cold Sophie, whose frustration with Samuel is a little too intense for the rest of the script; nevertheless, the play does well to focus on Samuel’s autism without making it all about it either.

Vinall’s Alice, estranged from her family as a result of an interracial relationship, quickly jumps into the play much like daughter Aurelia (performed by an instantly likeable Taneetrah Porter), though in a play where so much is said, it is a shame that this breakdown in the relationship between family and daughter is not fully and firmly revisited.

As well as this gap, the script becomes a little too episodic in the second half, moving at times too much away from its formula for success, the family dynamics, into quick duologues, which never seem to achieve very much. It is a shame that granddaughter Emily (Ella Dale) and overly shouty, and oddly incessantly shouty grandson Simon (George Lorimer) do not get a huge look in, a wasted opportunity in a play that seems to focus upon the changing of the guard.

Accompanying the piece is Dick Bird’s modest yet grand design for the Pennington house. The immaculately cream walls and cream upholstery portray the picture-perfect setting that the Penningtons, on the outside, try to project, and contrast the family’s erosion well. The design also complements the theatre’s thrust configuration, allowing for quick entrances and exits in the busy home, but also providing numerous viewpoints for the audience, with each flick of the eye, furrowed brow or anguished face, regardless of angle, unmissed.

Where The Gathered Leaves thrives is in the quick interplay between the family members, and the hidden tensions, secrets and resentments that threaten to come to the boil. While some are explored, others are mentioned and quickly scattered over, perhaps deliberately, but this achieves just a hint of bloating that risks detracting from an otherwise gripping, intense family drama. Nevertheless, when characters are let off William’s leash, these fiery and ferocious clashes, as well as the play’s more tender scenes, are completely engrossing.