People, Places and Things is theatre at its absolute best – review
It’s been a while since People, Places and Things last graced our stages: Duncan Macmillan’s drama originally debuted at the National Theatre back in 2015, winning rave reviews and earning Denise Gough an Olivier Award.
Macmillan and Gough have reunited with director Jeremy Herrin to revive the play at London’s Trafalgar Theatre, which opened this week and is playing through to 10th August.
We’ll say this right away: it’s absolutely brilliant – rarely does theatre feel this important. An urgent consideration of rehab, we meet Gough playing the role of Emma, who has arrived at the clinic battling drug and alcohol addiction.
She brilliantly navigates comedy and tragedy – in fact the play does as a whole – we laughed way more than we expected to at her deadpan putdowns and snarky comments, but there’s a serious side too: we witness a genuinely vulnerable side to her which we fully invested in.
