Theatre review: Guess How Much I Love You?

The Royal Court opens its seventieth anniversary year with one of its most notorious memes, although I'm not sure I would even count Luke Norris' Guess How Much I Love You Question Mark as part of that tradition, and not just because it doesn't take place in the Upstairs Theatre: The venue has traditionally used dead babies for shock value, but Norris' story takes the possibility of a baby dying and goes somewhere a lot more human and moving. It opens with an unnamed couple halfway through a pregnancy scan, playing Twenty Questions and discussing baby names, partly to distract them from the fact that the sonographer left them abruptly to get a second opinion, and has been gone for an unusually long time. We next meet Her (Rosie Sheehy) and Him (Robert Aramayo) during a sleepless night, after they've received a devastating diagnosis.

The baby has severe spina bifida and only a 50/50 chance of survival, and the parents have been given the impossible task of deciding whether to terminate the pregnancy now.

If they don't, they risk not only going through the full pregnancy and still ending in a stillbirth, but also that the child might survive but need lifelong round-the-clock care. Although it isn't the main focus of the play there's also a religious element underscoring their dilemma - Him's background is Irish Catholic, and while he isn't necessarily devout it's something that affects his sense of right and wrong, as well as the fact that his parents might disapprove of their decision.

So this is heavy-going stuff, with Grace Smart's set and Jessica Hung Han Yun's lighting literally squeezing the couple into corners; and while the scenes are delivered with devastating matter-of-factness, the scene-change blackouts are accompanied by Nick Powell's oppressive music. What raises Jeremy Herrin's production from sheer grimness is the performances - Sheehy's brittle fury coupled with Aramayo's jittery determination - as well as a surprising amount of laugh-out-loud moments.

The couple's (their being called Him and Her may, as well as the usual attempt at universality, also be a reference to us never hearing them choose a name for their son) fast, affectionate exchanges are one of the things that endear them to the audience and make us root for their relationship to survive the ultimate pressure, but they also deal with that situation with a gallows humour that carries on throughout the play. It's stopped from being a complete two-hander by a brief but crucial appearance by Lena Kaur's Midwife, whose brisk but kindly demeanour fits into the play's general style to deliver a major mid-story twist that visibly affected some of the audience.

So not a comfortable or comforting watch but Guess How Much I Love You? is a strong opener to a year at the Royal Court that - contrary to David Byrne (not that one's) usual low-key style so far - has launched with a lot of fanfare. I particularly liked the debate over whether deciding to terminate the pregnancy would be to take the child's likely physical suffering and turn it into their own mental pain, and whether that's what makes them good people; as well as an ambiguous ending that functions as a literal dream come true, but perhaps in a more banal, meaningless way than hoped for.

Guess How Much I Love You? by Luke Norris is booking until the 21st of February at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Downstairs.

Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Johan Persson.