'Sea Wall/A Life': Stirring drama of life and loss
8 / 10
Payne is better at the non sequiturs than Stephens. Then again, the design here is more obvious: Abe (Gyllenhaal) scrambles stories about the death of his father and the birth of his daughter. Unlike Sturridge, Gyllenhaal segues seamlessly, and sometimes he's talking about Dad before we realize he's finished with the wife and baby. It's an effectively sentimental play, and Payne isn't above throwing in John Lennon's 'Imagine' to give the heartstrings a good workout. It's also a deeply naive play. Only a playwright under the age of 40 would tell us that we plan for birth but we don't plan for death.
