review theatre: The Long Road | Soho Theatre| the story of a family paralysed by the death of their youngest son. He has been replaced in their lives by the phantom menace of his killer.

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The Review - THEATRE by JAMIE WELHAM
Published: 29 May 2008

The Long Road at the Soho Theatre

West End theatre| The Long Road |
Soho Theatre review| More Jeremy Kyle than evil incarnate.

THE LONG ROAD
Soho Theatre

YOU go into the shop to buy some Rizlas and when you come out your brother is crumpled in a bloody heap, dead on the pavement.
You’re just in time to see the ghostly face and black eyeballs of the girl who stabbed him – a random act of pointless violence.
The Long Road tells the story of a family paralysed by the death of their youngest son. He has been replaced in their lives by the phantom menace of his killer.
The household is catatonic – a father (Michael Elwyn) who turns to whisky and forms a compulsive running habit, a mother (Denise Black) who talks to the urn that holds Dan’s ashes and still crams the fridge with the cheese strings and Petit Filous he loved, and a brother (Steven Webb) caught in the middle, trying to escape the shadow of his younger sibling, who in his absence has never been more alive.
Nothing particularly original here, although the forensic exploration of emotional turmoil, complete with plate smashing and face slapping, transcends any hollow account of victimhood and tabloid revenge fantasies it could have been.
It is only when the mother, Mary, in her quest for meaning, is driven to meeting Dan’s killer that The Long Road finds its feet.
Surprise surprise, Emma, played by the diminutive Michelle Tate, is not a cold-blooded killer but a product of her environment – a broken home that social services have long washed their hands of, where her grandma’s answer to childcare was to douse the eight-year-old with rum and cokes in front of Countdown.
More Jeremy Kyle than evil incarnate.
Reaching its climax, which must be all the more powerful in the prisons where the play is designed to be performed, Mary and her son Joe confront Emma – the beginning of the long road to forgiveness to which the title refers.
It is left to the audience to decide whether such an ask is attainable.
Until June 5
020 7478 0100

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