Theatre review: Mad House

A few years ago Bill Pullman gave a memorable performance at the Old Vic in All My Sons, and now he returns to the West End to play a more grotesque, but no less scene-stealing character. And he's clearly not a star name who wants all the limelight for himself: After sharing top billing with Sally Field last time, he now shares it with David Harbour at a time when he must have known the latest season of Stranger Things would give him most of the attention. This time Pullman plays Daniel, the patriarch of a dysfunctional family in a small Pennsylvania town, whose wife died of cancer a year earlier, and who's now slowly dying of multiple organ failure himself. He doesn't want to die in a hospice so, with the help of palliative care nurse Lillian (Akiya Henry,) his primary caregiver is eldest son Michael (Harbour.) He's the only one of Daniel's children willing to do it, and it may just be because he needs somewhere to live after spending a year in a mental institution.

Theresa Rebeck's play is called Mad House, and apart from the obvious metaphorical meaning in a story about a warring family, it also proves very literal in terms of the blunt, deliberately hurtful and outdated language his family direct at Michael and his mental illness.

The first act deals largely with the explosive relationship between father and son, with Daniel goading Michael about his time in the asylum and claiming it made his mother die of a broken heart; and getting back sincere wishes that he'd hurry up and die. Though Daniel would never admit it to her face, they both quickly grow fond of the pragmatic Lillian, so she becomes someone Michael's siblings use to threaten them with: First the smarmy hedge fund manager Ned (Stephen Wight) returns, then the openly combative Pam (Sinéad Matthews.)

The play's publicity suggests the story is largely about the siblings fighting over their father's inheritance, and although for Ned and Pam at least this does resolve itself as the only real reason they're there, the first act in particular feels like its priorities are much more with the relationship between father and son, and how the arrival of Lillian brings out what real affection is underneath their (genuine) dislike of each other. For the second act, Frankie Bradshaw's set revolves from the kitchen to the back porch and the focus shifts more to the tensions between the siblings - particularly the way Pam's astonishingly calculated cruelty towards Michael goes back to her jealousy over him being their late mother's favourite.

Moritz von Stuelpnagel's production flows better in the black comedy of the first act than in the big family revelations of the second. In part I think this is down to a lot of the family history never being entirely clear to the audience, especially as regards Michael's history of mental illness: I couldn't quite reconcile the description of him as a lumbering, dim-witted little boy with possibly violent tendencies, with the version of the story that sees him working for an oil company in the Middle East when he had a sudden schizophrenic breakdown that shocked his mother - I don't think the word "relapse" is ever used, which might have helped square the circle.

I also had to remind myself this was a female playwright, as the character of Pam is written in such a harsh and unforgiving way it's almost misogynistic - her childhood jealousy doesn't excuse an adult whose entire motivations seem to be greed and wanting to destroy others' lives. She's so unpleasant she immediately makes the previous bad guy, Ned, seem sympathetic (I don't often single out costume design, but I have to mention how Tilly Grimes' choice of truly horrific loafers instantly mark Ned out as a wrong'un.)

As female characters go Lillian is much more likeable, although the West Indian nurse who exists largely so that the white folks can find themselves sails dangerously close to a dodgy trope of its own. We do also get a surprisingly sex-positive portrayal of two prostitutes (Hanako Footman and Charlie Oscar,) who are putting themselves through college. Pam, of course, has a much more Victorian approach to them, and I think it might have been interesting to explore a bit more how the younger characters in particular (who could be assumed to know better) use reactionary language about this, race, and particularly mental illness, as a weapon to hurt Michael. On the other hand I liked the way Rebeck avoided tying some threads up too neatly, particularly that of whether there was a mutual attraction between Michael and Lillian.

Overall though Mad House is entertaining, and probably wouldn't feel quite its two-and-a-half hour length if the Ambassadors hadn't been quite so hot and airless. It throws around a lot of themes with varying levels of success, the darkly comic look at warring families probably more successful than the more dramatic moments. Star casting doesn't always pan out but it's well-judged here - Harbour carries the show with much the solid dependability that his character carries the world on his shoulders, while Pullman is happy to be the more puckish presence, throwing in scene-stealing one-liners even during the second act he mostly spends offstage.

Mad House by Theresa Rebeck is booking until the 4th of September at the Ambassadors Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.