It is such a cliché, but trust the magnificent wordsmith in Joanna Murray-Smith to give it so much edge and polish.
I speak of an older man leaving his long-term wife for a younger woman.
In this case, it is a feted journalist married to a writer – a poet, no less.
She gave up her writing (she hasn't published anything in 20 years) to enable him to pursue his career goals.
Photos by James Reiser
The pair has a 24-year-old daughter attending a prestigious university.
Now, the journalist, George (Peter Houghton), is being interviewed by an attractive, confident and intelligent woman, Claudia (Ella Ferris), 29.
She is profiling him for a book on 10 great thinkers.
She greatly admires his intellect and the pair gets along well. She wants more and he is hardly going to resist.
Then, he drops the bombshell on his totally unsuspecting wife of 32 years, Honor (Caroline Lee).
Her tells her that while he still loves her, he doesn’t love her in that way.
Honor argues the toss, but it is clear that his passion for Claudia gives him a new lease on life.
Claudia, who can have any man she wants, imagines that George will help her to achieve her best.
George and Honor’s daughter Sophie (Lucinda Smith) is outraged and confronts her father.
So, are there any winners in a situation like this? Do George and Claudia ride off into the sunset together, happily ever after? Does Honor recapture her mojo? And what becomes of Sophie?
Joanna Murray-Smith captures all the twists and turns, the flirtatious and hard conversations that are had on the road to greater self-awareness.
She may have written Honour 30 years ago, but the conceit is no less relevant today, with a fine cast bringing it to life anew.
All the devastation and longing are on show.
Caroline Lee is stoic as Honor, who has willingly given up much, only to be put into an invidious position.
Peter Houghton has tickets on himself as George: self-centred, self-serving and blinded by the light.
Ella Ferris makes a good fist of the manipulative young woman reaching for the stars.
Lucinda Smith is just as plausible as the daughter still searching for her own voice.
A minimalist set, simply a stark white backdrop with chairs, puts the onus firmly on the verbal jousting and interchanges, which come at us thick and fast.
Even when actors are not directly involved in a scene, they are positioned a step down, left and right of the central stage area, watching the action unfold.
Direction from Sam Strong is tight throughout.
Honour remains a thinking person’s marriage breakup story, complete with inevitable fallout. There may be more than a few raw nerves struck.
Ninety-five minutes without interval, it is playing at Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre until 16th March, 2025.
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