Review: Wits End (Circle & Star Theatre)
Review by Justin Williams
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Families are peculiar things: collections of people bound together by blood, shared history and a lifetime of accumulated grievances, with familiar idiosyncrasies and microaggressions that tumble out like emotional lint from the pockets of the family tree. In Estée Stimler’s Wits End, we meet a family so wonderfully realised that it feels as though we’ve stumbled into the fifth season of an established sitcom, with characters who are rounded, deeply familiar and sharply defined by their own peculiarities. Their histories seem to stretch far beyond the confines of the play, and the writing is so tight in its observation, and the casting so convincing, that we can imagine the lives these people have shared long before we’ve taken our seats. What begins as a gloriously funny afternoon at a funeral gradually becomes something far more affecting, asking some rather profound questions about family, responsibility and what it actually means to love someone.
Written by Estée Stimler and directed by Steve Furst, making his directorial debut, Wits End introduces us to the Becker family following the death of their father, Marvin. His three children have rather different perspectives on their relationships with him and, perhaps more importantly, on the sacrifices each believes they have made. Yitzy (Daniel Lipton) has given up fourteen years of his life caring for his father, while Cooper (Shai Forester) has supported that care financially from three thousand miles away. Their sister Denise (Leah Marks) has her own opinions on the matter, and then there is Aunt Phyllis (Sue Kelvin), a woman who apparently hasn’t stopped talking since 1961. Throw in a rabbi hired from the internet, a eulogy containing the wrong names and a grave dug to the wrong size, and you have the ingredients for an afternoon of extraordinary family dysfunction.
In her programme note, Stimler explains how her Jewish upbringing and family have provided her with a rich tapestry of characters, describing them affectionately as both bonkers and lovable. She also observes that funerals, despite being solemn occasions, can become unexpected sources of uncontrollable laughter, an understanding that is woven throughout the play. It is in the writing that Wits End truly soars, with dialogue so wonderfully dense that it rattles through quotable line after quotable line, almost demanding that someone produce a range of tea towels featuring its best one-liners. There is a delicious familiarity to the passive-aggressive exchanges, including the recurring greeting, “It’s so nice to see you, it makes up for all the time we didn’t see you.” It is a perfectly observed example of how a seemingly affectionate remark can carry years of resentment, and Stimler understands that families rarely need to explain their histories because they are constantly revealing them through the smallest interactions.
The first hour is particularly exhilarating, with the pace and flow of the writing producing wave after wave of laughter, yet the cleverness is not simply in the jokes themselves but in how the exposition emerges naturally through the action. We, the audience, are effectively funeral attendees and, at one particularly wonderful moment, become potential suitors in the youngest son’s search for a soulmate. I won’t spoil the fun, but it is a delightful example of how the play makes us part of the occasion rather than simply observers. There is a remarkable economy to the writing, allowing us to understand the characters and their relationships without ever feeling that we are being instructed about them. Even the Jewish terminology, helpfully explained in a beautifully produced programme containing a glossy vocabulary section with both religious and comical entries, is introduced naturally through the dialogue. We are never far from a character explaining something in context, without the explanation feeling patronising or interrupting the comedy.
Furst’s direction is exquisite throughout much of the production, particularly in its handling of timing, pace and the more farcical elements of the writing. The comedy is played with precision, allowing the characters’ personalities and relationships to generate the humour rather than forcing it upon us. The cutaway scenes are especially effective, with characters isolated to share their perspectives and confessions, often while the family drama continues around them. These moments are beautifully judged, giving the audience an opportunity to understand what each character believes to be the truth, even when those truths are entirely contradictory. There is a confidence in the direction that allows the performers to be funny without constantly demanding attention, and the ensemble understands when to take focus and when to allow someone else to command the scene.
The casting is excellent, with Sue Kelvin’s Aunt Phyllis and Shai Forester’s Cooper as particular standouts. Kelvin has extraordinary comic timing, delivering her lines with a precision that makes even the smallest observation land beautifully. Her handling of the cutaway moments is especially accomplished, and although she never unnecessarily upstages the action, there are occasions when she becomes the drama entirely. It is a wonderfully assured performance, full of personality and the kind of familiar eccentricities that make her feel as though she has been part of this family for decades. Forester is equally impressive as Cooper, bringing a comic quality that reminded me at times of Eric McCormack’s Will in Will & Grace. There is something in his delivery, physicality and ability to move between exasperation, affection and vulnerability that makes him immensely watchable. Beneath the comedy, however, is a character wrestling with the belief that his financial sacrifices have somehow become invisible to the rest of his family.
Daniel Lipton’s Yitzy and Leah Marks’ Denise complete a convincing family unit, each bringing a different perspective to the complicated business of caring for an ageing parent. Lipton gives us a man whose life has been shaped by the practical demands of caring for his father, while Marks provides another layer of familial judgement and resentment. What makes the ensemble so effective is that nobody feels like a convenient device for delivering the next joke, with every character having a history, a viewpoint and a justification for their behaviour. We may not agree with them, but we understand why they feel the way they do, and that is a considerable achievement in a comedy moving at this pace.
David Boyle’s Rabbi Horowitz is another wonderful comic creation, breaking the fourth wall with the energy and spontaneity of a stand-up comedian. His hastily assembled, almost Temu-level sermon, seemingly cobbled together from a rushed internet search to plug a gap, is gloriously inappropriate. Boyle moves into the audience, responds to those around him and creates the feeling of something genuinely improvised, even while the scene remains carefully controlled. It is fresh, engaging and wonderfully funny, bringing the audience directly into the funeral and making us feel very present in the unfolding absurdity. These moments are among the production’s most successful, demonstrating how effectively Furst understands the relationship between performer, audience and comic timing.
The production is staged at the Circle & Star in Hampstead, an intimate 55-seat theatre where there is very little distance between the performers and the audience. It is a lovely, comfortable space for a piece of this length, performed without an interval, and the simplicity of the staging is entirely appropriate. A series of chairs, a lectern and a video wall displaying images of the deceased, together with additional screens supporting the funeral home setting, provide everything required for the first section of the play. The stripped-back approach allows the writing and performances to take centre stage, with the technical elements supporting rather than overwhelming the action. Jack Cleary-Flores’s lighting is particularly effective during the cutaway sequences, isolating speakers and creating an almost split-screen effect as the confessions and family grievances pour out. His sound design also supports the action effectively, adding both atmosphere and moments of comedy, particularly during the later outdoor scenes.
The introduction of gravestones and a park bench for the change of location is more visually substantial, with their mottled grey surfaces and carved inscriptions clearly establishing the graveside setting. However, I found these elements slightly at odds with the stripped-back visual language of the earlier scenes. The change in location also alters the tempo of the piece, and for me this later section is the weaker of the two. I enjoyed its whimsy, and the sound effects are entirely appropriate to the moment, but the fuel and energy of the comedy are at their strongest in the funeral scenes. The final fifteen minutes attempt to bring the family’s future into focus and tie up a number of loose ends, including a rather surreal offstage plot development which is funny in itself but feels somewhat uneven against the rest of the play. Stimler’s writing continues to offer the sharp observations and humour we have enjoyed throughout, but the direction feels a little less assured here, almost as though the production is uncertain how best to accommodate the material. There is very little room in a space of this size for anything more elaborate, and the ending is economical in that respect, but I couldn’t help feeling that the play was rushing towards a conclusion it didn’t necessarily need to reach.
Indeed, I wonder whether everything needed to be wrapped up quite so neatly. One of the most interesting questions raised towards the end is simply, “What will you do next?” Yet not knowing is rather like life itself, where we make plans, imagine futures and then discover that circumstances have other ideas. There is something rather wonderful about allowing an audience to draw its own conclusions, particularly when the characters have been so fully realised that we can imagine their lives continuing beyond the final scene. The play has already given us so much to think about that I would have been perfectly content to leave some of those questions unanswered.
It is in the questions surrounding love and responsibility that Wits End reveals its greatest strength. What is caring, and how do we show love to someone? What are we prepared to give up for it, and is love always evident in the sacrifices we make? Is love sometimes performative, something we demonstrate to others in order to prove its existence? How do we care for someone who can no longer remember who we are, and how far should we go to preserve what love once meant when everything was fine? These are profound questions to emerge from an evening in which I had spent so much time laughing. One sibling has sacrificed years of their life providing physical care, while another has worked hard to pay for that care from a distance. To one, absence is neglect; to another, it represents an enormous financial and emotional sacrifice. Cooper cannot bear to see his father as a husk of the man he once knew, but his contribution has helped provide the best care available. Meanwhile, Yitzy’s daily acts of feeding and supporting their father become the more visible, symbolic expression of devotion. Who has given more? Who has loved more? How do we judge, and perhaps more importantly, should we judge at all?
Beneath the farce, the relentless one-liners and the wonderfully dysfunctional family relationships lies a message that many of us will eventually have to confront as our own parents grow older. The pressures placed upon siblings, the resentments that develop and the different ways people express responsibility are explored with considerable honesty. What I found particularly moving was how gradually this realisation crept up on me. For much of the evening, I thought I was simply enjoying a brilliantly written comedy, and I certainly laughed more than I expected to at a funeral. Yet as the evening progressed, I found myself thinking increasingly about the lives of these characters, their sacrifices and the things they had perhaps failed to say to one another. There is a lovely message running through the piece about living life, protecting memories and recognising the complicated ways in which we love. We are left laughing through a gauze of rather profound questions, and that is no small achievement.
Wits End is a wonderfully funny, sharply observed and beautifully performed piece of theatre, with writing that feels both extraordinarily accomplished and deeply human. Its final moments may be a little too eager to resolve the questions it has raised, but the strength of the characters, the precision of the comedy and the sincerity of its message make this a thoroughly enjoyable and surprisingly affecting evening. To laugh quite so much at a funeral feels almost wrong, but perhaps that is precisely the point. There is joy to be found in grief, humour in the most difficult of circumstances, and love in places where we might not immediately recognise it. If I have one criticism, it is that I left a funeral feeling rather too happy.
Wits End plays at Circle & Star Theatre, Hampstead, until 22 November. Tickets from https://www.tickettailor.com/events/circleandstar/2402801
Photos by Justin Bovington.