FringeReview UK 2025

End

National Theatre, London

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

Venue: National Theatre, Dorfman

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

“I hate cancer more than I hate Millwall.” At this point a loving struggle between the couple in David Eldridge’s End has entered injury time before their daughter arrives. One, though has a longer game than the other. The last of a loose trilogy over eight years, it’s helmed by Lyric Hammersmith director Rachel O’Riordan, once again at the National Theatre’s Dorfman, till January 17. With the three works spanning Rufus Norris’ tenure of the National, this being his last programmed work, the sense of making a good end is palpable.

Clive Owen (Closer) and Saskia Reeves (Slow Horses) – here playing Alfie and Julie – last worked together in Stephen Poliakoff’s 1991 film Close My Eyes. Casting lends a palpable symmetry answering those in End – which echo Eldridge’s work. Though O’Riordan has replaced Polly Findlay, director of the first two plays of the trilogy, there’s a sense of valediction.

The couple move round Gary McCann’s detailed open-plan kitchen diner design: Reeves like a satellite skimming in an electron-like ellipse round Owen’s tight, and tight-lipped orbit, limping with a stick. The set’s lit by Solly Ferguson, and gestures to a larger house in Haringey. You see the stained glass of the front door slowly strengthen with a mid-June morning: precisely it’s the Sunday before Brexit and Father’s Day. Donato Wharton’s sound snaps on mischievously and often elicits laughter when an incongruously-timed piece of house music erupts.

Eldridge has talked of the trilogy, which takes place over eight months from November 2015 to June 2016, as being a time of  innocence. Before Brexit, Trump, the demolition of West Ham’s old stadium and (as the programme mentions) following the election of Corbyn to the Labour leadership. Each male protagonist is a West Ham supporter, has moved from working-class Essex roots to London affluence. Not simply the arc of Beginning and Middle, but elements from Beginning regroup; even Crouch End is mentioned. Here though Alfie’s “We ain’t got no grandchildren’ poignantly cuts across the fragile tomorrows Julie frames, another device. A glance at In Basildon with its ‘I’m forever blowing bubbles’ also pops up.

The resonances add layers but are integral to the way End plays out. Reeves darts with energy and a blonde crop which adds to the energy she emits bar one devastating moment alone. Owen looks transformed, wincing with pain, indeed with a look that never leaves him. Owen’s Alfie is compelling and utterly convincing. Alfie, a still-successful DJ from the house music era, announces at the start that he’s no longer going to continue chemo. Reeves almost reels with shock but rallies.

Though supportive Julie doesn’t accept this, and the way Julie and Alfie circle each other is fuelled by how Julie thinks this through. Julie’s a crime novelist “in a box with Martina Cole”. So much so that her admission that she wants to write a wholly different book – about them – means she’d have to write pseudonymously. Despite this seeming another strand of Eldridge – like West Ham – it doesn’t quite settle. Reeves isn’t lent a tic of the preoccupation that goes with the territory: though naturally her focus is on Alfie and Annabelle, their daughter due at nine. The finality of a published novel, like a drama script, might nudge a metaphor for death; it doesn’t seem like that. Neither are religious, though Alfie’s desire to be buried back with his parents (where there wouldn’t be room for Julie) is literally grounded in a deeper negotiation than Julie’s suggestion of going organic and summoning “the power existing inside all of us”. Alfie has some decidedly analytic answers to some of the compounds he’s exhorted to take.

Nevertheless, there’s a sashay of intimacy and distance: early on the couple make love, for the last time as Alfie thinks:  Bethan Clark’s intimacy direction is quietly stunning in both tender hesitation and stillness. There’s also a powerful release from Reeves, twice, whilst Owen’s briefly outside. Returning because another couple are having sex, Alfie’s report is uproarious. Grief and laughter – the play’s often funny – also switch sides.

Alfie’s announcement preludes revelations about them both, where Julie drives the negotiation. It is admittedly more about Alfie. Julie has slightly less to say, as Alfie grandstands a good life that occasionally becomes “good riddance to bad rubbish” as he finally admits remorse. As Alfie reveals he wishes to withdraw after farewells to a hospice alone, the past re-emerges: painful infidelity and surprises mostly sprung by Julie. Options round exiting a life soon or holding back can’t map on the Brexit vote four days hence (it’s hinted the couple will vote Remain); but the proximate rashness of decision (as seen by them) isn’t accidental.

The pull towards offstage Annabelle becomes part of the point, not merely end-stopping the play’s real-time 90 minutes (down from 100 earlier). The quietly magical moment when Julie dances but Alfie can’t join in, all return in outbursts of pain and a blank looking-forward for Alfie that Julie has an answer for. Eldridge’s language takes off in Alfie’s repeated anaphoras, the litanic peal of regrets. Julie’s language uses them too, in a quiet set of decisions. The arc and power of End is slowly irresistible. It can’t bring the thrill of romance in Beginning, but bar the slightly numb fee of Julie as a novelist – though not her ability to plot – End is enormously satisfying. With outstanding – and outstandingly subtle – performances from Owen and Reeves, and a script fired with conviction and probing tenderness around how we all face death, this is a must-see.

Casting Alastair Coomer CDG, Dialect Coach Patricia Logue,  Voice Coach Cathleen McCarron,  Associate Sound Director Nick Mann, Staff Director Philip J Morris.

Published November 23, 2025November 23, 2025 by Simon Jenner