End at National Theatre: 'Performed with great subtlety by Clive Owen and Saskia Reeves'

Saskia Reeves (Julie) and Clive Owen (Alfie) in End at the National Theatre. - (Marc Brenner)

David Eldridge’s National Theatre trilogy of plays about love and relationships featuring three different couples comes to a satisfying, um, end with Clive Owen as club DJ Alf and Saskia Reeves as teacher and writer Julie, together addressing Alf’s imminent death from cancer. As with its predecessors, Beginning and Middle, End is a closely observed, unshowy study of two people – from Eldridge’s native milieu of the working-class East End and Essex - struggling towards something.

Some of the many references to druggy rave culture feel a little forced in Rachel O’Riordan’s production, and when Julie talks about writing she starts to sound less like herself and more like Eldridge. Although the characters are given equal weight and dignity the gender politics are old skool – here’s a self-centred man in extremis tended by a capable, placating woman. But overall this is a gentle, sad, valedictory piece of work about life and death, happiness and class, performed and directed with great subtlety. And there’s a pleasing sense of completion and synergy within the wider context of End for those who care about such things.