Brian Cox and Patricia Clarkson lead West End revival
8 / 10
Cox, all bark and ferocity, plays up the character’s fury, his sense of betrayal, his anger at the world and himself. In short, punchy outbursts of speech, he is cruelly dismissive of James, and you almost feel McCormack flinch beneath his verbal blows. Even more shockingly, he is prepared to skimp on the care of the delicate Edmund, whose diagnosis with consumption provides the play’s main narrative thread. Yet in the long final conversation between them, Cox also reveals James’s fear of poverty, and Kynaston’s wonderfully intense and frightened Edmund listens as if understanding his father for the first time.
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