I love the Curzon cinema. Not only are their seats super comfortable, but they also show the most amazing recordings of plays I’ve missed when they were in the theatre!

This week I took a trip down to the Brunswick Centre and watched the amazing play adaptation of A Little Life. I did go into this play completely blind, not an inkling of what the story was about, but fully aware of the multitude of trigger warnings attached to the production. And it was amazing.

A Little Life follows four friends living in New York: Malcolm (played by Zach Wyatt) a successful architect, Willem (played by Luke Thompson) an actor, JB (played by Omari Douglas) a struggling artist, and Jude (played by James Norton) a mysterious lawyer.

Jude is the main character of the play, and he is portrayed beautifully by James Norton. Throughout the piece, there are a number of time jumps but Norton’s characterisation and mannerisms makes it easy to keep up. When he shows Jude as a child you see the character look up at different characters a lot of the time which helps the audience imagine a height difference despite there not actually being one on stage. Not to mention his speech and word choices as a child are very different from the adult character.

I did find the character a little whiney throughout the first half of the play but during the second half, you get to understand his past in more depth which helps the audience understand his choices and decisions.

As well as Jude being a hard character to watch at times, his relationship with ‘authoritative’ figures throughout the play comes off as uncomfortably unprofessional. In the first instance, his relationship with his social worker Ana (played by Nathalie Armin) is far too close. But she is mainly portrayed as a hallucination or the voice of reason inside his head. So, I can almost overlook that. Harold (played by Zubin Varlar), his old professor, has a relationship with him which is extremely close and can be seen as inappropriate. Harold’s interests in Jude are eventually made clear, which again almost makes his interests forgivable. But Jude’s doctor Andy (played by Emilio Doorgasingh) is far too out of line. He doesn’t section Jude when it is clearly needed. He blames Jude’s friends for Jude’s actions. He treats Jude like a friend or even a family member and that is not something I can get past.

Without giving too much away, I left the cinema (where the recording was shown) angry. I understand that not everyone gets a happy ending but to have had a glimpse of the happiness taken away from you in the last 15 minutes of the play left me mad. I was annoyed that Jude didn’t learn how to speak his feelings sooner.  I was annoyed the doctor didn’t take more extreme measures to keep Jude safe earlier on. I was mad that I, the audience, fell into a false sense of security before everything was destroyed again.

And for that reason, I love and hate the production.

I love how it made me feel everything and left me angry. But I hate how it made me feel everything and left me angry. I hate how it just illuminates that sometimes love does not conquer all and that trauma can win.

It really is a must-see.

A Little Life is showing in selected cinemas until (October 11th 2023) all over the world for a limited time only. You can find tickets here

The book is based on the novel A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara which you can buy here (affiliate link)