TOWARDS the end of Nick Payne’s new play, The Unbelievers, a desolate mother says a silent prayer. Her beloved son went missing after school seven years ago, and her life has been a daily torment. She asks her first husband, who is a priest, to kneel with her, hold her hands. “It’s OK to say whatever I want?” she asks. He replies that it is “more than OK, it’s essential”.
Nicola Walker plays Miriam, the grieving mother who cannot properly mourn, ever hopeful that her son, Oscar, is still alive. She gives full vent to an emotional spectrum that cracks like Aeschylus. It is an astonishing, white-knuckle ride: one-and-three-quarter hours without interval.
The ensemble acting has the instinct and finesse of a string quartet. Paul Higgins is David, Miriam’s ex-husband and Oscar’s father. Did the announcement of their planned divorce drive Oscar away? Ella Lily Hyland plays Margaret, their other child: a whip-smart young adult who must cope with her parents’ madness in addition to her own emotions.
She is helped in this by the intelligent half-sibling Nancy (Alby Baldwin), who is Miriam’s daughter from her first marriage to Karl (Martin Marquez), the priest. He wears his clerical collar throughout to signal he’s a vicar (thank you, designer Bunny Christie), although he’s off-duty and is something of a chaplain to this unreligious and complicated family, now with added complexity. Peripheral cast members in the form of police officers, love interests, and even a mystic add to the whirl of confusion and loss.
Every character is intricately drawn, with shades of how each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. The writing pulses with humour and despair. Payne, who has previously shown his dramatic brilliance with Constellations, splinters the narrative here across a seven-year period, its jump-cuts giving emphasis to the jaggedness of grief-time.
Marianne Elliott’s direction finds a rhythm and pathos in the spaces around these people; a chair seems to ache with Oscar’s absence. When the actors are not in a scene, they occupy an open waiting room behind the playing area. The constant threat of this tragedy is to engulf them all as they spin about Miriam, whose depths are a mother’s love; her refusal to give up is like granite. She prefers to go to Ghent to explore an unconfirmed sighting of Oscar than attend the memorial ceremony that the family has planned for him. She cannot lose hope.
Faith, presence, and the stability of assurance are the gnawing questions. Their grief is inescapable, but its contours are more difficult. Who and what do we grieve? When and how? The forms that mourning can take are various. Working it out is often harder. Blessed are those who mourn, even as they hope for things unseen.
The Unbelievers runs at the Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, London SW1, until 29 November. Box office: phone 020 7565 5000. royalcourttheatre.com