Theatre review: End

In the spirit of The Cornetto Trilogy being so named because of a non plot-significant ice cream being consumed in each film, I'm going to have to refer to David Eldridge's sequence of relationship plays as The Bros Trilogy from now on, given the briefly all-conquering pop trio get a completely random little dig from each of the three couples in the stories. After Beginning and Middle it's not particularly surprising if the end is called, well, End, but the title does also serve as an apt one for the last show to be programmed at the National by RuNo (the Dorfman having ended up lagging behind the other two theatres because of emergency repair work.) Having had wildly different reactions to the first two instalments I was strangely cheered up by the blurb suggesting the end in question was death not divorce, and after the sourness of the last chapter I was glad to find something more bittersweet.

Alfie (Clive Owen) lives comfortably in Crouch End, following his career as a superstar DJ and his partner Julie's (Saskia Reeves) success as a crime novelist. But he's starting to consider returning to his Essex roots - not to live, but to be buried in the family plot after his death.

The reason this, and the tracklist for his funeral, are on his mind, is because he's decided not to pursue any further treatment for his terminal cancer. Instead of up to an extra year he's decided to accept the prognosis of three months and die with dignity, but that's not the only bombshell he's got for Julie: Once he's in the hospice he doesn't want her or their daughter to visit him, because he wants to say a definitive goodbye to them before that.

As we lead up to this second revelation I thought we might be heading into Nick Payne territory but instead of assisted dying Eldridge is looking at a different, in some ways more shocking idea of what a good end is. Alfie has already decided on the end of his life but this decision is about the end of the relationships that have defined it, and he wants to get a say in when and how that happens because his father's death was defined by many visits, never knowing which was the last one. It's a pleasingly unexpected twist in a sad, funny, moving conclusion to the trilogy.

Gary McCann has designed a luxurious North London home that means this show carries over an identity so anyone who saw the earlier ones can feel the connection, while those who didn't can experience it as its own thing. Rachel O'Riordan has taken over directing duties and similarly doesn't reinvent the wheel, with Reeves in particular giving a kind of brittle edge to the naturalistic, halting dialogue. For those of us who have seen them it's satisfying to notice that the first play took place a little after midnight, the second in the middle of the night, and this one around 7am as the couple get up to make breakfast (and do not succeed in getting a pot of tea brewed.)

The only slightly distracting thing about the show is the fact that it takes a while to become apparent it's not set in the present day - it's disorientating to find out the characters met in 1981 aged 23, so they would not be pushing 60 today. From context we're mid-2016, possibly just to have the whole trilogy take place around the same time as there's only vague allusions to the big political changes that year. Or possibly because Eldridge just wanted to get a reference to West Ham moving home ground as a metaphor for change.

End by David Eldridge is booking until the 17th of January at the National Theatre's Dorfman.

Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.