At Last: Ultimate Storytelling

Proforca Theatre Company present At Last by James Lewis and Alexander Knott. At the Albany Theatre, Coventry on Sunday 21 September 2025. Directed by David Brady.

Review by Alison Manning

Part of the “In the Spotlight” festival (20-21 September) a weekend of new and innovative shows at the Albany Theatre, Coventry, Proforça Theatre Company’s At Last is a powerful play about beginnings and endings, forgetting and remembering, stories and truth.

Written by James Lewis and Alexander Knott, and directed by David Brady, it is set in a time when a far-right British government has fallen after ten years in office and people are reflecting on what has happened and what will happen next. In order to review what has happened, an enquiry has been started and 2000 people are picked, allegedly at random, to tell their stories.

The cast of seven actors play seven different characters who predominantly address the audience, and rarely each other, recounting their experiences under the authoritarian regime, so, in effect, we realise that we become the enquiry.

As the play progresses though, we become more than that, we are the listeners to their stories, and through their retelling and our hearing we are somehow validating their accounts and almost liberating them from their pasts, enabling them to move on with their futures. The strong connection with the audience is maintained, not only through the narrative form, but also at the start where some actors sit amongst the audience, as well as occasions where remarks are addressed very directly at specific audience members.

The story is told from several different points of view as we see the different facets of life under far-right rule. One character is an auditor, one an activist, another a magistrate, and a family of two brothers and their mother that has been pulled apart. Stories are dramatically interspersed, for example cross cutting from one brother telling of trying to  defend his big brother against bullies at school whilst the other brother, in between, relates the story of the brutal treatment he received in the labour camps, after being arrested seemingly just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the magistrate deciding to make an example of him.

It would seem that many people have disappeared or being taken away under the regime, with some being exhibited in cages as punishment in Piccadilly Circus and others being sent to harsh Labour camps. Some simply vanish and their fate remains unknown. The way the evil of such governments may not be at first apparent, but only slowly revealed, is shown through Colin, the auditor’s story, as he recounts progressing from counting data to counting body bags on the streets of Hackney. Thus, civilians who have been shot down, shut down and silenced by the powers that be become just another spreadsheet statistic.

The cast of At Last.

This play is all about the stories and the emphasis on these is reinforced by the simple set, consisting essentially of a couple of rows of chairs and a screen with relevant images. The black curtains surrounding the Albany’s Spotlight studio form an excellent blank and solemn backdrop for the retellings. The intimacy of the small space, coupled with the sometimes unnerving and unsettling soundscape, added to the intensity of the difficult stories unfolding. All of the actors are barefoot, perhaps to highlight both the nakedness of the truth they are narrating and their vulnerability resulting from this.

One character is a young woman helping collect the stories for the enquiry but is also deeply affected by the stories she hears and her own recollections. One is an unrepentant magistrate, convinced he did the right thing. Another character is an activist, using the activist skills she has learnt from her late mother, scarred by her memories and losses.

It’s a close contest, but perhaps the most heartfelt story is that of the mother and her two sons, one who was arbitrarily arrested and in a camp for two years, where he experienced torture, the memories of which still traumatise him, contrasted with his brother who joined the police, for lack of any other jobs, getting swept up in crowd controlling violence that followed. The mother, convincingly and emotively played by Demelza O’Sullivan, fondly recalls memories of them as innocent children as she wonders if their newly reunited family is about to be split up again, what the consequences of the enquiry might be, and whether the chasm that has grown between her sons through their different circumstances can ever be bridged.

This play serves as a warning to us all of the perils of power in the wrong hands, perhaps especially by those who feel they are doing the right thing, and how quickly this can spiral out of control. It is ultimately, though, a story of hope, however small, reflected in the tiny glimmers of nightlight flames in a closing scene, that at last evil can be overthrown with love. It is also an illustration of the importance of remembering when all you want to do is forget.

This was the last planned performance of At Last, for now but look out for more powerful plays from Proforça Theatre Company as well as other exciting things coming up at the Albany Theatre.