The Long Road – Curve, Leicester

Writer: Shelagh Stephenson

Director: Adel Al-Salloum

Reviewer: David Noble

The Public Reviews Rating:

The last memory of the jollity of panto season was erased by The Long Road, last night. Shelagh Stephenson’s brief look (only 80 minutes) at the effect of a son’s murder on his family, dealt in mortality and the moribund in a way that provided insight, yet was not overly innovative.

The series of monologues that comprised the bulk of the performance told the story of a family attempting to come to terms with the death of Dan, the youngest son in the Pritchard family. Naturally, Dan was seemingly the favourite son, which leaves his brother undervalued (Stand By Me), someone takes up a hobby to help deal with their grief (White Noise), and the death could have been avoided if he was not in a set place at a set time (etc. etc. etc.) However, ignoring the rehash, the main idea of The Long Road is forgiveness, and without being groundbreaking, the principle of a mother trying to forgive her son’s killer is certainly intriguing.

Even so, this theme was still not examined brilliantly. The stop-start nature of monologue proceeded by monologue meant the play lacked any real fluency, whilst at times it felt like one was watching a clip show of classic responses to death. This made it difficult to empathise with the characters, in a performance that so definitely needed the involvement of the audience.

One cannot blame the cast for these fundamental flaws, however. For instance, David Leonard gave a fantastic performance as the disillusioned father, and Tracy Brabin was good as the heartbroken mother. Yet for all their efforts to convey bleak emotion, they were let down by a script that offered little depth.

All in all, The Long Road was a frustrating experience. It could have potentially been an enlightening and different play, but too often it drifted back towards the dreaded cliché. It was a maudlin meander, when it should have been so much more captivating.