THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By John Morton
Minerva Theatre, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 6AP until June 6, 2026
This is the first play by British TV writer/director John Morton, best known for People Like Us and his wonderful trilogy of satirical comedy series: W1A, Twenty Twelve and currently Twenty Twenty Six which gently skewered media types and their nonsense but which also revealed him to have one of the best ears for dialogue and how we actually speak.
This painfully bittersweet tale takes place over one day in the kitchen of an old rectory in Devon, where Sarah (Sarah Parish) the daughter who stayed and Jonathan (Rupert Penry-Jones) the son who moved away, are making vigil for their father, who lies dying in the next room. We never meet him, but his presence hangs heavy.
We also meet Graham (Paul Thornley) Sarah’s partner who return to mow lawns and grab any time he can flirting with Julia (Katherine Bennett-Fox) the old man’s nurse. Soon Nell (Mariam Haque) also arrives. She’s Jonathan’s ex whom he spurned for her friend, now his partner, and her reluctant return creates a tension you could cut with a knife. Needless to say everyone behaves impeccably in this most English of plays.
Morton, as we know from his TV work, is a master of the pregnant pause, the non sequitur and the awkward exchange, all mediated through endless cups of tea. As they wander in and out of the kitchen, taking a break from the demanding patient, they exchange pleasantries with the milkman or the postman or discuss the weather, the roads (what routes they took), the toaster, the bins, but never the big stuff, as if they don’t have the language for that.
A mind-numbingly mundane exchange about yoghurt flavours favored by the patient drags on, building slowly until Jonathan’s hilarious but slightly guilty explosion. Morton paces all this beautifully and these slowly simmering scenes are genuinely funny.
Although the central quartet here have an awful lot that remains unsaid, they are usually diverted from their attempts to speak by the casual interruptions of the day and night care workers Karen (Selina Cadell) and Linda (Lizzie Hopley), who are supporting the family. Cadell nails that blend of formality and warmth that carers must have while Lancastrian Linda provides some comic relief.
You think that something this personal must be autobiographical and Morton indeed does acknowledge how inspired he was by the coterie of NHS and care workers who nursed his dying father, adding in a programme note that “some of whom were intentionally funny, some were unintentionally funny, but all were unbelievably kind”.
The play mines a perfect seam of quiet humanity in the face of bereavement and at times is intensely moving. Penry-Jones has never been better, capturing the confusion and pain of Jonathan, while Parish (so brilliant in BBC’s Industry) gives us yet another case study in brittle, wounded, pride. She’s an astonishing actor, here embodying the familiar resentment of an angry middle-aged woman who has had enough being taken for granted by all the male family members but takes it out on her careless but well-intentioned partner. It all makes her final, crumbling, rapprochement with him, after her father slips away, even more powerful.
Simon Higlett’s hyper-naturalistic set immerses us in a kitchen which betrays signs of neglect, (including a dangerous toaster) and the perfect English country garden in its full summer splendour. Emma Chapman’s lighting charts the passing of this long summer day, while Ed Clarke’s soundscape of piano music and dawn choruses complements the mood perfectly.
