{"id":388418,"date":"2025-09-01T03:12:20","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T03:12:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/388418\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T03:12:20","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T03:12:20","slug":"polar-bears-white-bear-theatre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/388418\/","title":{"rendered":"Polar Bears – White Bear Theatre"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s an awful lot going on in this play. This production is kind enough to stick an interval in \u2013 when Polar Bears premiered in 2010 at the Donmar Warehouse, directed by Jamie Lloyd (then Associate Director at the Donmar), it was one of those ninety-minute no-interval shows. If writing about what you know is the playwright\u2019s mantra, Mark Haddon has lived experience of living with bipolar disorder, as does Kay (Kim Featherstone), around whom the storyline is centred. In some ways, it\u2019s a very honourable thing to revive a play about mental health at a time when it is all the rage (and when you look at the world in 2025, it\u2019s hardly surprising that people\u2019s psychological wellbeing is not exactly tickety-boo).<\/p>\n

\"PolarPolar Bears at The White Bear Theatre<\/p>\n

This particular play, though, doesn\u2019t start at the beginning and doesn\u2019t finish at the end, and in between, bounces around the play\u2019s fairly longitudinal timeline. Kay, a children\u2019s author, falls in love with John (Stephen Trowbridge), a philosophy lecturer. The audience is even treated (or subjected) to both a children\u2019s story and a philosophy lecture, accordingly, presumably to underline this. For me, there\u2019s more fun to be had in a philosophy class, if only because one gets to ask, \u201cQuestion everything? Why?\u201d and go from there.<\/p>\n

The trouble is that such is Kay\u2019s mental state that the creative juices sometimes overflow, and the lines between reality and make-believe are not so much blurred but erased. There\u2019s a reason why Jesus (Nicholas Gauci) appears to her and not to any other character. Kay\u2019s brother, Sandy (Ciaran Duce), is one of those business executives who thinks that to care about the bottom line is to care for people, in the sense that providing people with livelihoods wouldn\u2019t be possible without profit. These are all rather complex characters, but Sandy was also, for me, highly contradictory, practically denying the reality of Kay\u2019s mental ill health whilst also attempting to put John off continuing a relationship with Kay, because of her apparent mental condition.<\/p>\n

Completing the set of on-stage characters is Margaret (Pamela Hall), Kay\u2019s mother, a pragmatist at heart whose husband died by being taken by his own hand. The play, then, is rather too successful at portraying a depressing family life, and elsewhere, there was more academic name-dropping than was strictly necessary. I thought Kay\u2019s mood swings could have been a little more, well, moodier: granted, she snaps at John to \u201cf\u2014 off\u201d at one point, but John\u2019s actions at the end of the story (with which, strangely, the play kicks off with) don\u2019t seem commensurate with his general persona. This is a man who practises his philosophy \u2013 never taking any action without having carefully considered the pros and cons \u2013 so to act on impulse was difficult to fathom.<\/p>\n

Some elements of the dialogue felt unnecessary \u2013 there were references to Oslo that didn\u2019t seem to actually go anywhere, and a description of the stages of human decay post-death, which didn\u2019t say anything that isn\u2019t already in the Wikipedia page for \u2018corpse decomposition\u2019 (yes, I looked it up on the Tube home). A hardworking cast does their best to deliver a highly convoluted script in a show that resulted in more questions than answers.<\/p>\n

\"3<\/p>\n

Review by Chris Omaweng<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u201cTalking means nothing. Not until you\u2019ve seen it. not until you\u2019ve been there.\u201d<\/p>\n

John has never met anyone like Kay. When the moon is in the right phase, she is magnetic and amazingly alive. But when the darkness closes in, she is lost to another world, a world in which John does not belong.<\/p>\n

Ciaran Duce \u2013 Sandy
Kim Featherstone \u2013 Kay
Pamela Hall \u2013 Margaret
Stephen Trowbridge \u2013 John
Nicholas Gauci \u2013 Jesus<\/p>\n

Written by Mark Haddon
Directed by Jo Romero
Aaron Blackledge \u2013 Light & Sound
Yas Trowbridge \u2013 Assistant Technician \/ Operator<\/p>\n

POLAR BEARS
White Bear Theatre<\/a>
28 to 30 August 2025<\/p>\n

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