The Breach

Last Updated on May 17, 2022

Friendship and betrayal on stage at Hampstead Theatre

The Breach, written by Naomi Wallace and directed by Sarah Frankcom, is having its UK premiere at Hampstead Theatre, the first of a trilogy of plays that take place in an ‘imagined‘ Kentucky. It tells the story of three friends and a sister whose adolescent behaviour has consequences that reach into their futures in ways they could not have foreseen. Wallace, an award-winning playwright, who hails from Kentucky, has spent the past few decades living in North Yorkshire. Her plays include Slaughter City and One Flea Spare, which have been well received both in the UK and in France. In fact, The Breach was first performed in French.

Wallace skillfully blends the personal and the political and sets each of her plays against the backdrop of one of America’s wars. In The Breach that is Vietnam. The play alternates between 1977, when the characters are adolescents, and 1991 when they are in their early 30s. In the programme are two very informative essays which are well worth reading before seeing the play. The first is about the effects of the Vietnam war on American children who observed their parents grappling with moral dilemmas about sending their sons to war and the moral relativism that many teenagers at the time developed. The second is about Neoliberalism and the way in which the wealthy benefitted, leaving behind those who were poor and voiceless. These issues feed directly into the characterisation. Wallace has spoken about her youth in interviews and the crowd she ran with who were considered ‘rough’ but she experienced as filled with youthful dreams and vitality. By the time she was in her 30s, half had died from suicide or overdose. She states that The Breach was written to honour her childhood friends.

Moving backwards and forwards through time, the play takes place in a basement of a house occupied by two adolescent siblings and their mother who is struggling to keep the lights on. The father has died in an industrial accident due to the negligence of his employers. The brother, Acton, is being bullied mercilessly at school and is offered protection by two boys who vie for the attention of his older sister, Jude. She is helping to keep food on the table by washing dishes at night – she is young, but her hands are already old – and she tries to protect her brother in whatever way she can, stepping up into the roles that her parents might have played. Acton and the two slightly older boys, Hoke and Frayne, form a triumvirate, a band of brothers that they hope will last a lifetime. They pledge to prove their loyalty to one another by sacrificing something of greatest importance. Herein lies their unravelling.

The title refers to a shocking breach of trust within the friendship group but equally seems to reflect the breach of responsibility that society has to protect its most vulnerable citizens. The Breach is a disturbing play, partly due to the sexual violence that is explored but also because of the emotional detachment that runs throughout the drama. While the vulnerabilities of the characters float close to the surface they affect to keep them deeply buried. It is an interesting psychological portrayal of trauma, the trauma of being bullied, being poor, being objectified as a woman, of betrayal, loss, sexual violence, of guilt. Yet with all this emotional baggage, I found myself rather unmoved and wondered whether Wallace has written the play in such a way to leave the audience feeling as uncomfortably cut off as the characters seem to be from their own actions and emotional responses.

Hoke (Alfie Jones and Tom Lewis) is from a wealthy home, bestowing favours as his family has strings to pull. As with any protection racket, this comes with a cost.  Frayne (Charlie Beck and Douggie McMeekin) fends for himself as best he can while insulating himself from the feelings that threaten to break through about life with his brother who has been maimed in Vietnam. The lives of siblings Acton (Stanley Morgan) and Jude (Shannon Tarbet and Jasmine Blackborow) are dispensable – they are the poor, white working-class who struggle on the margins of society. Their father has fallen to his death on a building site owned by Hoke’s father. To Hoke and Frayne, Jude is both mesmerisingly out of reach and a sexual object to be abused for their own pleasure. The play portrays very well the structural inequalities of class and gender.

The boys decide to prove their enduring loyalty to one another by sacrificing what is most important to them, their bond an attempt ‘to shore up against insecurity and doubt’. They call it Top My Love. Hoke can afford to give up his Yale education as he has the family business to fall back onto. The less well off have nothing of monetary value and can only give up what is far closer to home – pets and people they love. Hoke makes big gestures and bestows favours, but ultimately abuses the trust of the most vulnerable of the group.

I found Jude to be the most interesting character – defiant in the face of poverty, responsible for keeping the family afloat and her very vulnerable brother safe from the bullies that threaten to consume him. She wrestles with the objectification that the young men project onto her, attempting to wrest control of their desire to use her and, ultimately to abuse her. Her vulnerability is clear to see but she keeps it under tight control, it slips only when she briefly screams out her rage and pain in response to her betrayal by her brother whom she had hoped would protect her. He is too vulnerable to have taken on the mantel of protector, a role he relies on Jude to perform. Parent figures are only referred to, it is as if they are either killed off by the system, working all hours to make ends meet, or busy making money in the corporate world.

Jude and her brother, Acton, enact a game throughout the play wherein they imagine the last thoughts of their father as he fell to his death. This is an interesting device with much psychological depth as the children try to cope with the crater-sized loss in their life by turning it into a game. It also sets up a pathway for inevitable self-destruction. For all the characters, their youth blinds them to the implications of the decisions they made. As the older Jude observes, ‘we’ve no idea of the size of the thing barreling towards us, the incomprehensible momentum of it’. 

The stage ( designed by Naomi Dawson) on which The Breach plays out is almost bare and mirrors the bleakness of the content, the lighting (Rick Fisher)is simple but effective. The cast all put in strong performances, I found Morgan’s performance as Acton especially engaging.

The Breach is the first of a trilogy of plays. Wallace has already written the second and I hope that audiences will not have to wait too long for the third.

The Breach is on at Hampstead Theatre until 4 June.

Hampstead Theatre
Eton Avenue,
Swiss Cottage,
NW3 3EU

https://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/