Theatre review: A Little Life

I think it's the first 2023 show to self-identify as "the theatrical event of the year" - certainly A Little Life has become a hot topic, whether because of selling out so conclusively it's already added a second West End run, or the discussion of whether it represents the apex of misery porn, or just because people like celebrity cock (something this blog has never had any strong opinions about, obviously.) Then there's the fact that it's had a decidedly marmite response from the critics - my personal experience with Ivo van Hove has been very love/hate as well so this really could have gone any number of ways. van Hove and Koen Tachelet adapt Hanya Yanagihara's 2015 novel about Jude (James Norton,) one of a quartet of university friends who stay close throughout their lives. He's well-liked but it's openly acknowledged among his friendship group that he's so private they don't know the most basic things about him.

Early on this causes an issue when artist JB (Omari Douglas) paints and exhibits a portrait of Jude in a vulnerable state, without his knowledge or permission. On the surface the two make up, but Jude never truly forgives him, and JB never quite regains his place in the group.

One thing he hasn't been able to keep from them is that his body has sustained permanent injuries, which have left him covered in scars, occasionally needing a wheelchair, and with the expectation that as he grows older he may need to have his legs amputated. He's told them it's because of a car accident, but that's just a carefully-selected fraction of the true story: Being run over (deliberately) by a car was just the culmination of a childhood of physical and sexual abuse by the monks who raised him and other figures he should have been able to trust. Elliot Cowan plays all the abusers, primarily Brother Luke who "rescued" Jude from the other monks only to pimp him out himself.

Brother Luke is not only the one who poisoned Jude's view of love and trust so that he seeks out dangerous partners in later life, but also the one who actively recommended self-harm as a coping strategy. So Jude cuts himself so often that half the evening is spent with characters mopping blood off the floor; and while he has a support network including his regular doctor Andy (Emilio Doorgasingh) and mentor-turned-adoptive father Harold (Zubin Varla,) he doesn't have a healthy enough attitude towards caring relationships to trust them, and keeps going back to Brother Luke's advice to cut or burn himself.

The talk around A Little Life braced me to love or hate it, but in reality I was somewhere in between / neither / both, depending on what point of the nearly four-hour show you asked me. I ended up finding the material deeply suspect, and definitely glad I haven't read the book as it seemed to confirm the accusations I've heard levelled against it. Certainly from start, being found as a baby in an alleyway by the bins, to end, committing suicide in the most painful way he can think of (not a spoiler, Harold confirms early on that he will outlive his son,) Yanahigara seems to have designed Jude to be the Dirk Diggler of misery porn, only getting the odd moment of happiness so it can be dashed by more death or pain.

And while there's some earnest points being made about abuse and trauma, there's the uncomfortable underlying feeling that the story glamourises them for entertainment value. Why else are the central friendship group a perfect quartet of glamorous-sounding professions? As well as the artist, we've got Jude's best friend and later supernaturally-perfect boyfriend Willem (Luke Thompson,) an actor; while the most vaguely-drawn character, Zach Wyatt's Malcolm, is the holy grail of romantic comedy "I'm not entirely sure what they do but it sounds aspirational" leads, an architect. Meanwhile we're meant to believe that social services are at the same time so inept they rescued Jude from the monks only to deliver him straight into the hands of another paedophile; and so efficient that within a couple of years of this, they'd educated him to the point where he could study pre-law at college, fit in, on the surface at least, with his new roommates, and eventually become a wealthy corporate lawyer. I don't want to stereotype about abuse victims becoming crack addicts under a bridge, but surely there's a happy medium between than and "superficially perfect life."

While the script is careful to skirt around actually defining anyone's sexuality, there's definitely the use of a "bury your gays" trope, and a sense of gay characters being there to suffer for the audience's voyeuristic pleasure. It could also be levelled at the sole female character, although I can see how this imbalance is on-theme for the story: We never actually meet social worker Ana (Nathalie Armin,) only Jude's imagined memory of her because she died of ?????????????? seemingly moments after they found a connection. But as Jude's psychosexual issues are all connected to men, a woman might have actually got through to him, and since his life is essentially the psychological equivalent of Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes, she had to be taken out of the picture immediately.

Speaking of the sexual side of the story, of course the genuine merits or otherwise of the play have been largely overshadowed by discussion of James Norton's nude scenes and the leaking of (censored, haven't they heard of the internet?) photos to the press (so it's ironic that there's that storyline about JB taking and publishing images of Jude without his permission.) Although Norton with his clothes off unsurprisingly isn't a terrible sight, both these scenes involve a lot of trauma and blood, so you'd have to have... quite specific interests to really get off on them in context. Besides, Norton's isn't the onlyFULL-FRONTAL MALE NUDITY ALERT!as Thompson also bares all, which is both catering very specifically to my interests, and in what amounts to as close as this story gets to a more romantic, sexy scene. It does also confirm that the only part of Luke Thompson's body not to have the proportions of a Greek statue is the one with considerably more heft than most Greek statues have.

So what's the verdict, if I even have one, on A Little Life? Certainly it offers a lot to talk about, but not all of that is good, particularly the feeling that it exploits the sort of extreme abuse and trauma that for some people is their very real lives. But van Hove's production does present it strongly. Yes, it's a long show and sometimes the attention wanders; Jan Versweyveld's design includes a constantly playing, slow tour of the Lower Manhattan streets in early morning, which distracted me. For Phill, it was the almost constant cooking and preparing of snacks on stage, and his main concern at the interval was what happened to the aubergine that he saw chopped up but didn't spot getting put in a dish. But for the most part it justifies the running time, thanks in no small part to the cast acting up a storm. The story it tells leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and ends on a note that it's been very much misery for its own sake, but the way it's told is consistently interesting.

A Little Life by Ivo van Hove, Koen Tachelet and Hanya Yanagihara, based on the novel by Hanya Yanagihara, is booking until the 18th of June at the Harold Pinter Theatre; and from the 4th of July to the 5th of August at the Savoy Theatre.

Running time: 3 hours 45 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Jan Versweyveld.