Theatre Review: Alone Together is a play for your mind

Alone Together
Theatre Royal, Windsor until August 19

Laurence Olivier used to say the purpose of theatre was to “glamorise intellect,” and of course, in his day, that’s precisely what it did. It continually challenged the prejudices of theatre-goers, made them think about their lives and awakened them to societal shifts happening around them.

Modern theatre, by contrast, challenges our little grey cells all too seldom and rarely extends our emotional literacy. Since Covid it’s become more bland than ever, now that risk-averse producers are prioritising star names and formulae that they know are tried-and-tested over good, intelligent scripts that actually have something new to say.

Maybe it’s because Simon Williams grew up in another time, making his name as an actor in the classic television series Upstairs Downstairs, that he has admirably bucked this miserable trend in Alone Together.

It is above all things a very clever and thoughtful play with an unusually sure grasp of the human condition. Jenny Seagrove and Martin Shaw play an unhappily married couple whose lives start to fascinate Josh Goulding’s budding young writer.

In the first 10 minutes or so I thought here we go again, back in safe sitcom suburbia with a generational clash and the usual middle-aged angst, but soon I realised Williams had taken me in and what I was looking at wasn’t what I thought I was looking at.

The play touches on the delusion that is often so much a part of online dating, the pain of infidelity, the compromise that is necessary to get through life and our extraordinary capacity for misery, but, understanding that the human condition is inherently ridiculous, Williams also makes the play very, very funny.

The director Sean Mathias – who also understands entirely what makes a great writer tick after penning the screenplay for The Lost Language of Cranes – lets the words work their magic over time and makes the most of every twist and turn in the plot. The old team of Seagrove and Shaw are meanwhile at the top of their respective games. He portrays evil in a wonderfully lugubrious and under-stated way, and she heartbreakingly depicts the soul of a broken and damaged woman. Goulding is all the while splendid as a clumsy, vulnerable love-struck youngster pulled into their world of toxicity. I’ve seen no more intelligent, or stylish, play than this in decades.