The Southbury Child
Directed by Nicholas Hytner
At the Bridge Theatre

Every regular theatergoer will know the feeling – you’re heading to the latest play that you’ve got tickets for, simultaneously excited and nervous at the prospect. All the plays you’ve seen recently have been, if not duds, then middle-of-the-road fare that were passable but didn’t have that ‘magic’ that keeps you coming back. And then, out of nowhere, you go to something that reminds you of how great theatre at its best can be – of everything it does well, from the laughter to the sadness and, well, the feeling of witnessing a really human drama. This is the run I’d been on, watching plays that receive two or three or, very occasionally, four stars from the press but which wouldn’t necessarily keep somebody new to theatre coming back. The Southbury Child is the play that has ended that streak. It is magnificent, a triumph of the type that rarely come along even in a theatre scene as vibrant as London’s.

It is almost a perfect play. The writing (Stephen Beresford), the direction (Nicholas Hytner), the acting, the casting (Robert Sterne), the set (Mark Thompson), the lighting (Max Narula) and the sound (George Dennis) are all close to immaculate, and the final product is even greater than the sum of its parts.

Alex Jennings, a London theatre stalwart, plays David Highland, a priest and our main character. In some ways, he is your typical Church of England clergyman – well-spoken, forgiving, married with two children, and reassuring in his manner with room for doubt in his faith. He’s got a quick wit, and is full of amusing quips (he knew a vicar who used to preach on the Old Testament teaching about the treatment of hangovers: ‘Moses took two tablets’). However, below the surface lie traits that make him a far more atypical priest. He angers easily, even around strangers. And word on the local grapevine is that he has a problem with drink – hence his recent car crash – and with infidelity. His family life is unusual in another way too – one of his daughters, Naomi, is adopted and has black skin.

David’s parish is St Saviour’s, Dartmouth, a remote town where everybody knows everybody and there is a sharp social divide – there are the second-home owning middle-classes (‘grockles’, to the rest of the population) who overlook the water, and the locals, often descended from those working in skilled trades. The opening scene, in the vicarage that provides the backdrop throughout this play, involves one of these locals, Lee Southbury (Josh Finan). He could hardly be more different to the urbane priest, with a strong West Country accent and proudly wearing his tracksuit. His niece, Tanya, has recently died and preparations are being made for her funeral to be held at the church overseen by David.

There is a rift in the family; Lee has behaved in a way that is, perhaps, unforgivable, and is struggling to cope with the fallout from his actions. As the two men discuss the funeral, a seemingly innocuous point comes up – the matter of some balloons. Tanya’s mother would like some Disney balloons put up in the church. David, gently, refuses to do so. He feels it would be wrong for there to be balloons at a solemn funeral ceremony in his church.

Until the interval, the matter of the balloons is the key plot line. It is eccentric and peculiarly English, yet wholly believable. Everybody has an opinion – all the members of David’s family, his new curate, the doctor’s wife (and local busybody), and the audience. Is it reasonable for David to want to ban the balloons? Is he in the right for wanting to preserve a certain vision of what a funeral should be, or should he give the grieving mother what she wants? This storyline introduces us to the entire cast of characters.

Mary, the vicar’s wife, is uptight, unemotional and repressed. She wishes her husband would listen to the vociferous majority on the issue of the balloons, and give Tanya’s mother what she wants. Naomi and Susannah, the two daughters, are more ambivalent on the balloons – a rare similarity between them. Naomi, the adopted daughter, is an actress and party animal who has temporarily returned home from London to try and get a handle on who, precisely, she is. Susannah, by contrast, has never moved out of the vicarage, and is now a lonely and perpetually stressed teacher at the local primary school. Intruding on the family home is Craig, the young, handsome and gay curate. He causes a crisis as soon as he arrives, turning up in a car with tinted windows and urging David to change his mind on the balloons within minutes of meeting his new mentor.

Completing the cast are Tina Southbury (Tanya’s mother, who we do not meet until the scene before the interval), local policewoman Joy Sampson, and the local busybody Janet Oram. The latter two are fully fleshed out characters in their own right, but largely serve as comic relief in a play that is hilarious throughout. Between Joy and Janet (and all the other characters too), the play takes sensitive and good-natured aim at stereotypically rural and urban traits while ensuring the characters remain authentic.

If there is one criticism to be made of this play, it is that the balloons plot line lacks closure and is almost entirely dropped after the interval as other themes – including family relationships, friendship, revenge, the adaptation of Christianity to modern social norms, and the politics of place – and storylines come to the fore. But this is a minor gripe in a production that otherwise does not put a foot wrong. The term ‘masterpiece’ is overused, but this play fully deserves that accolade.

The Southbury Child played at the Bridge Theatre from 1 July to 27 August 2022.

Christopher Day is currently a PhD student at the University of Westminster.