Middle: One marriage on the rocks, please: couple in crisis take centre stage
Middle by David Eldridge at The Loft, Leamington Spa, directed by Viki Betts, running until 3 October 2026.
Review by Amanda Burden
The living room in the early hours of the morning is a weird, liminal space. Devoid of the hustle and bustle of family life, it is usually visited only at points of either crisis or magic: the knock at the door bringing unexpected news; the phone call that changes everything; the parent pacing backwards and forwards with a crying baby, wondering when exactly they last slept, the child awaiting Father Christmas.
Time behaves differently at this hour. Minutes crawl while hours disappear. The room is lit by the rise and fall of the moon, the blue flicker of a television nobody is watching, the sodium glow of a streetlight.
In Middle, at the Loft Theatre, the disruption comes not with a knock at the door or the telephone ringing, but with something considerably more prosaic: a cup of hot milk.
Mags (Lorna Middleton), the housewife at the centre of the drama, has made it for herself as she ponders her failing marriage. Gary (Chris Gilbey-Smith), her husband, wakes up. And that tiny domestic act begins the painful process of picking over the bones of a relationship gone bad.
What follows is 90s kitchen-sink drama with the emotional temperature set to high: somewhere between Alan Bennett and Harold Pinter, but with the unmistakable clutter of a lived-in British marriage. This is not a union destroyed by one spectacular betrayal, but the death by a thousand cuts - a slow car crash precipitated by tiny things. The things that weren't said. The things that were said but misunderstood. The jobs that became somebody else's responsibility. The compromises that seemed reasonable but 16 years later have become subsidence threatening the very structural integrity of the couple.
And then there is the question that sits beneath everything: when did we stop being us?
Middleton and Gilbey-Smith are both excellent, but Middleton is superb. There is something finely observed in her performance: the exhaustion, irritation, intelligence and self-absorption of a woman who has spent years being the person who remembers things. Gary, by contrast, is bumbling and ineffectual, the sort of man who can be genuinely lovely while simultaneously making you want to scream.
Mysterious daughter, eight-year-old Annabel, sleeps peacefully throughout the uproar, unaware of the chaos unfolding beneath her - possibly the greatest unseen character since Coronation Street's Tracy Barlow disappeared upstairs for four years to listen to her tapes.
The everyday genius of the play lies in the characters' duality. Neither Mags nor Gary is a monster - but neither is innocent. There is no pantomime villain to boo. Instead, we watch two people who have accumulated a life together and are now forced to examine the contents in painstaking detail.
The plot is hallmarked by something unmistakably and unbearably British. The great emotional revelations arrive alongside domestic trivia. Love and resentment are thrown in with childcare, money, sex and work and the whole doom pile is dumped on the kitchen table with a "here, sort this" label.
The humour is important because without it the whole thing could become incredibly bleak. People who have been married for years don't usually conduct their marital breakdowns in Hamlet-esque soliloquies. They argue about the washing-up. They remember conversations differently. They make jokes at the moment when they should have a serious conversation. They weaponise old grievances that neither of them can remember the origin of anymore.
Underneath all the bickering is something much sadder: the possibility that two people can love each other and still reach a point where love isn't quite enough to make the life they've built together work.
A special mention to director Viki Betts and the creative team, who built a 90s domestic set that feels especially well-suited to this kind of drama. The open-plan layout means there is nowhere for the characters - or the audience to hide. We are close enough to the domestic details to recognise them, and near enough to the emotional wreckage to feel uncomfortable about bearing witness.
Somewhere between the hot milk, the arguments and the accumulated detritus of married life, something chimes. Not necessarily reminiscent of your own marriage - but maybe your sibling’s or parents'. , your friends', the couple next door. Or the strange frightening institution of adulthood, in which people can spend twenty years building a life together and still occasionally look across the room and think: How the hell did we get here?
Middle managed to be funny, uncomfortable and tender. And, like a living room at three in the morning, it is a place where ordinary things suddenly take on enormous significance.
This is the centre point of a trilogy by playwright David Eldridge. Without the final instalment, there's no way of knowing what lies ahead for Mags and Gary, so I'm very much hoping the company returns for the last hurrah to see where the couple land. Will they sink or swim? Are there sunny uplands ahead or the swampy hinterland of 'staying friends'? And - importantly - will we ever meet Annabel? Please don't leave us hanging, The Loft. We, like Mags and Gary, need closure.
For tickets: https://lofttheatrecompany.com/performance/middle/
Comments