Theatre review: My Name is Lucy Barton

Ladies and gentlemen, LAURA MOTHERFUCKING LINNEY.

I’m still not sure any more review is actually necessary for My Name is Lucy Barton, Elizabeth Strout’s short novel adapted into a stage monologue by Rona Munro and directed by Richard Eyre at the Bridge Theatre. Bob Crowley’s simple set is a hospital room, where writer Lucy spent nine weeks in the early eighties after an appendectomy went wrong. She looks back on that time now, specifically the day that her estranged mother suddenly appeared at the foot of her bed – Lucy’s husband had asked her to come and paid for the air fare, otherwise she wouldn’t have visited. It sends her on a disjointed recollection of her childhood in rural Illinois, where the family were so poor she would stay late at school because it was better-heated than their house. The effect of this extra study time was a scholarship to university, where she met her future husband and moved with him to New York.