People, Places and Things
This review is from 2016. ‘People, Places and Things’ will return for 2024, with Denise Gough reprising the role of Emma. Interview: Denise Gough – 'If this had happened when I was 23, I'd be dead' Before I really get busy with the hyperbole, it may be worth noting that second time around, one of the best things about Denise Gough’s astounding performance in Duncan Macmillan’s addiction drama is how understated it is. True, her chronically unreliable addict-actress character Emma spends most of the first half completely off her tits: Headlong and the National Theatre’s transferring hit starts with its heroine slurring her way through the role of Nina in Chekhov’s ‘The Seagull’, suddenly staggering into a nightclub, then shambling into rehab (groggily hoovering up a cheeky final line of gak first). It is undeniably pretty funny. Yet, for all the initial, broad black comedy and the flourishes lobbed in by director Jeremy Herrin – multiple Emmas erupting out of the walls, floor and furniture as the cold turkey bites – Gough gives a masterclass in nuance and subtlety. It is the best London stage performance since Mark Rylance’s in ‘Jerusalem’, but it’s also the polar opposite of his larger-than-life turn. Emma is a self-invented woman trying desperately to be normal, to be honest. She has lost all touch with herself, self-medicating through booze, drugs and pretending to be other people. As she reluctantly enters the drab rehab facility – presided over by Barbara Marten as a d