Wings, theatre review: Juliet Stevenson takes us to another plane

This isn’t a solo show, but for much of its 75 minutes it feels like one — a challenging vehicle for Juliet Stevenson. In this revival of Arthur Kopit’s Seventies play, last seen in London more than thirty years ago, she takes us inside the mind of a woman who’s suffered a stroke, exploring the ways in which trauma taxes her sense of self.

Her character Emily used to be a stunt pilot who walked enthusiastically along the wings of planes, cartwheeling in mid-air. Now she’s spinning in a private chaos. At first she is barely able to communicate, and even as she regains a degree of control over her body her movement is awkward. Suspended by a harness, she reels and swoops across the stage.

As lights flare and noise swirls around her, Emily struggles to make herself heard and projections suggest how the most basic structures of her life have dissolved. Yet she’s a model of fortitude, and Stevenson’s performance is both sensitive and unflinching. Early on, she’s not always audible, but that’s no accident — the smudgy tone contributes to our sense of the havoc she’s experiencing — and as her dismay becomes more coherent the sound sharpens.

Emily’s hospital initially appears sinister rather than comforting, and the doctors who pepper her with questions talk the way British tourists often do in foreign restaurants, repeating themselves slowly and at ever higher volume. Their vocabulary strikes her as bizarre, but her own is full of curios, and when at last she’s ready for a rehabilitation session with fellow patients, there are flickers of punning humour — with Lorna Brown making a strong impression as her tough yet sympathetic therapist.

The project reunites Stevenson with Natalie Abrahami, who directed her in 2014 in an intelligent take on Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days, a portrait of imprisonment and endurance. Here, in what’s inevitably a much more dynamic production, their collaboration again pays off. This aerobatic piece isn’t always emotionally engaging, but Stevenson ensures that it’s disorientating and at its best mesmerising.

Until Nov 4, Young Vic; youngvic.org