THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
By Luke Norris
Royal Court Theatre, Sloane Square, London SW1W 8AS until February 21, 2026
The great Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square is, amazingly, about to celebrate its 70th season and it will be packed with star turns and revivals. Artistic director David Byrne, however, naturally wanted to open with a new play, in this the cradle of new writing.
Guess How Much I Love You? by actor/playwright Luke Norris (best known for TV’s Poldark) is an impressive start to this landmark season. An intimate, bruising drama that grabs you from the first moment of its tight 95 minutes running time.
We’re in a hospital ward and a young expectant couple – Her (Rosie Sheehy) and Him (Robert Aramayo) are in the middle of their 20-week scan. She is hooked up to an ultrasound machine, her pregnant bulge exposed and covered in gel as they wait for the nurse to return. She’s on edge and he prowls around trying to distract her with words game like 20 Questions, or running through possible names for the baby. He plays “their song” (Velvet Underground’s ‘Pale Blue Eyes’) and tries to get her to dance with him.
Norris’ drama plays out in six sharp scenes framed by quite long blackouts; there are no other characters apart from Lena Kaur as a jaunty midwife. He structures the play around the heart-wrenching dilemma of whether to continue a pregnancy knowing the baby may face severe disabilities and only a slim chance of survival. The couple have a decision to make, and we watch them try and live with the physical and emotional consequences of it.
The writing is unflinching, forcing the audience to confront the elemental grief of such a couple while still allowing space for some, mostly dark, humor and the strange absurdities that surface in moments of crisis and grief. Norris’s quickfire dialogue hurtles like an express train and while it’s acutely observed it is at times rather over-written. It’s as if in trying to show us every dimension of these two characters and their dilemma he throws it all in there, to the extent that credibility is stretched. The NHS hospital’s leniency in allowing her to cling on to the dead infant for as long as she does is rather dubious, and it must be added that surely the emotional wreckage around any stillbirth provides fuel for enough drama in itself without gilding it, as he does here, by adding other dimensions.
Sheehy, who is turning into one of the most electrifying stage actors of her generation (so brilliant in Machinal and The Brightening Air), is astonishing here. She perfectly channels the volcanic mix of rage, bewilderment, and aching vulnerability of this woman, but the destructive violence of her tirades and the brutally articulate goading of her husband, who is the gentler of the two, does make one wonder how they’ve stayed together. Things are said which you’d imagine could never be unsaid, and the relationship would never recover from one of these fights – not to mention the four or five we experience here in a row. We learn how she is an untrusting victim of a damaged upbringing whereas he’s presented as an altogether more poetic presence (quoting Yeats), shaped by an Irish catholic upbringing which she also goads him about.
Director Jeremy Herrin’s staging mirrors the emotional claustrophobia of the piece with Grace Smart’s impressive designs locating the characters is a series of perfectly detailed, cramped rooms before finally giving them a glimpse of sun at the end. Jessica Hung Han Yun’s lighting is again exemplary, adding so much to the emotional temperature of the piece.
In the end Sheehy and Aramayo make the piece with the sheer intimate intensity of their performances, but it is somewhat of an ordeal.
