Guess How Much I Love You
Royal Court, London
★★★★★
 

LUKE NORRIS is best known as an actor, having established himself on television in big hits like Poldark, and also on stage in a string of 5-star shows. Here he reminds us of his considerable playwriting skills with a small, intense, (almost) two-hander that simply blows the lid off the abortion debate and rips your heart to shreds.

A man and a woman are discovered in the process of their 20-week pregnancy scan. The radiographer has left the room and the two indulge in quick-fire repartee, bouncing from mind games to contemporary references, and personal quirks to points of conflict. Even as we listen, we are transported into their inner selves and feel the complexity of their raw relationship.

Much of what they say is funny, and much detonates explosive sparks of recognition in our switched-on minds. We hear their ceaseless patter, but mostly and most deeply we imbibe their chilling fear.

For one underlying anxiety will not lie down, no matter how the couple fill the time. And insurgent questions repeat themselves even when unspoken: Where is the radiographer? Why has she so abruptly left the room after seeing the scan? What is the outcome of said scan?

Even as the couple squabble about pornography, indulge in word play, or explore baby names, the on-coming heartbreak seeps into their souls and ours like blood from an open wound. We know what’s coming. So, at some level, do they. And the rest of the play is the slow unfolding of anguish and loss, intensified by the couple’s banter and wrangling, and the thousand brain responses that make them variously joke and weep, rage and be calm, hope and bicker.

There are dramatic moments to die for, riveting dialogue that never lets up, and inducement to a level of empathy rarely achieved on stage. And we are all engrossed in the moment-by-moment unpicking of an elemental grief.

Anyone who wants to take a rigid conceptual position on pregnancy termination, or glide over a friend’s loss of a baby pre-term, should first see this play.  

Rosie Sheehy — fresh from her triumphs in Machinal and The Brightening Air — brings us what must be an award-winning performance as Her: so moving, so layered, so uncompromising, so all-immersive, while Robert Aramayo, as Him, inhabits the same aura as Her — though more gently, superbly displaying all facets of a modern young man and stealing our affection, while baring his heart and inwardly fielding the mental gymnastics of a mind in disarray and trauma.

Director Jeremy Herrin should be fiercely proud of this jewel of a piece which opens the 70th anniversary year of The Royal Court. And the staging by Grace Smart is genius: small, tight, perfectly crafted, vivid sets moving us from hospital to bedroom, bathroom to beach.

So much is invested here in the depth of the experience that a resolution is hard to come by, and the ending is somehow abrupt. But this is a small gripe for a truly moving play with sensational performances.

Runs until February 21. Box Office: 020 7565 5000, royalcourttheatre.com