FringeReview UK 2025

The Unbelievers

Royal Court

Genre: Contemporary, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Short Plays, Theatre

Venue: Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

“What the fuck would he be doing in Beverley?” A week, a year, seven years. What’s time to grief with nothing to mourn? When 15-year-old Oscar goes missing, his mother Miriam enters the vortex of how to extract a living or dead child from a whirlpool, and pulls in family and occasionally friends with her. She’s not the only one affected but in Nick Payne’s The Unbelievers directed by Marianne Elliott till November 29, Miriam has set herself as conscience, guardian, witch-finder and search-party. Nicola Walker’s Miriam Wright is the vortex, in what might be a career-defining performance.

Payne himself has always been absorbed in time’s possibilities. And he doesn’t repeat himself. In One Day When We Were Young he jumps a couple forward in three time-zones over 50 years. Famously in Constellations he fractions possible futures. Here we’re again in that triple time-frame: a possibly post-Oscar world of a week, a year, seven years. Payne though mixes these up without lighting or even a cast shift. It’s a swirl at first but settles. The text uses different typefaces, though that doesn’t help at the moment of watching.

We begin a year on, with another time-wasting sighting in Beverley; and with scarcely a beat the play’s back with the police a week in. Walker’s Miriam seems more focused than OCD soon-to-be-ex-husband David (Paul Higgins) who at every instant flies off in a frantic panic aria. Higgins is explosive around David’s extremes, though it’s Walker’s Miriam who proves the most disturbing. In her reactions to outsiders, Miriam seems the more reasonable, yet Walker telegraphs tiny fractures throughout, so you’re always unsure what will set off her huge denial. Of the unbelievers of the title, there’s comfort in number. But what happens when that becomes singular?

Payne though ensures we don’t think of either spouse as unsympathetic. Such a blank loss brings out traits even the character might not have suspected in themselves.

Two children from different marriages respond differently. The younger Margaret (Ella Lily Hyland) growing from 17 to 24 shows herself sassy, on-trend, ultimately in charge of her own rational life. Elder sister musician Nancy (Alby Baldwin) has just emerged from a relationship and is open to possibilities. Instead of Margaret’s button-holing she seeks alternatives, including answers to the outline of a boy who appeared next to her keyboard at night. Enter bumptious psychic investigator Anil (Jaz Singh Deal) revealing he’s an academic sceptic; and apologizing for his ringing phone every time he even approaches sympathy. His intern Mia Olsson (Isabel Adomakoh Young, like Singh briefly a police officer) is altogether more empathetic. One of the few glowing moments is her awkward come-on to Nancy: Thackeray and Baldwin delight in a kind of hesitation waltz. Another soaring moment out of Miriam’s time (she’s ordered time, you might feel) is Baldwin’s playing and singing a near-complete, gentle elegy.  Yet another involves the new lovers with Miriam in an attempted séance: it’s oddball and faintly disturbing till it isn’t. The sisters are only once briefly alone: enough to establish who’ll transcend and work through loss, and who might be able to move on.

Yet another gentle influence is Karl Gomez (Martin Marquez), previously Miriam’s alcoholic first husband. He’s now reformed, a vicar. Though not gifting answers – he’s initially cut off when trying to bring Miriam back to the rest of her husband – his humanity shows a different redemption. David finds Karl’s no sudden prude, though he has standards. Miriam finds Karl can endure blind dates where one woman simply wants to have sex with a vicar. And he and Miriam aren’t immune to each other. Karl, in Marquez’s slowly radiant performance, delivers his trying to make sense of the world. When he succeeds it’s: ”A light. A presence.”… Faith is practice. So. I mean it’s a verb. So, I pray.”

There’s a climactic moment as David’s wanted to bring a seven years ritual all through that sequence – the time-frames work in slow reveals though obliquely – culminating in Margaret revealing both her pregnancy (to different, dismaying responses) and her older partner. Puffin scientist Benjamin (Harry Kershaw) is a parody of an academic tongue-tied except around their subject, and Kershaw’s bluster and left feet are cringingly fine. He finds one listener in David’s new partner Lorraine (Lucy Thackeray). Already distinguished as the level, unflappable DC Elizabeth Hawkins, Thackeray’s life insurance saleswoman Lorraine starts affably out of her depth and starts selling insurance like Benjamin extols puffins. This is where Walker, whose boundaries are often triggered by stupidity or presumption, takes her walking whirlwind to a new level.

Bunny Christie’s set utilises glassy windows upstage where actors not on set look like versions of Oscar’s ghostly presence. It’s an otherwise undistracting set, with a few props and Nicola T. Chang’s lighting steadily diffuses throughout; as Payne refuses to differentiate the light of experience. Chang’s sound is almost liminal.

In a uniformly excellent cast, Walker’s performance – primed to go off on a hint of insensitivity or anyone treading over her grief’s territory – reveals levels of care and reasoning, as she speaks her truth. In a play that mightn’t soar quite like Constellations, we’re still offered as near a closure as possible. Walker is transcendently fine, though Miriam when finally speaking rather than reacting over the drama’s 110 minutes, doesn’t speak all you feel is inside her. One of Payne’s finest plays though, The Unbelievers confirms the Royal Court’s new phase can again splice the traditionally-crafted with the exploratory. A must-see.

Casting Director Charlotte Sutton CDG, Design Associate Verity Sadler, Assistant Director Anna Hampton, Props Supervisor Lily Mollgaard, Voice Hazel Holder, Casting Associate Saffeya Shabil, Production Manager Zara Drohan, Costume Supervisor Lucy Walshaw, Company Manager Mica Taylor, Stage Manager Laura Draper, DSM Surenee Somchit, ASM Ava G. McCarthy Stage Supervisor Steve Evans, Stage Show Technician Oscar Sale, Lighting Supervisor Lucinda Plummer, Lighting Programmer Lizzie Skellett, Lighting Operator Holly Higgs, Dresser Katie Pollard, Set Build Illusion Design & Construct, Lead Producer Hannah Lyall, Executive Producer Steen Atkinson.

Published November 4, 2025November 4, 2025 by Simon Jenner