ajhlovestheatre

GUESS HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU?

by Luke Norris

directed by Jeremy Herrin

Royal Court Theatre, London – until 21 February 2026

running time: 100 minutes no interval 

https://royalcourttheatre.com

It’s awfully early in 2026 to be proclaiming that something is the play of the year, but any other new piece of writing, central performances and overall production in the next ten months will really have to be going it some (technical term) to match this no-holds-barred stunner. Luke Norris is a very good actor, but on the basis of his script for Guess How Much I Love You?, premiering on the Royal Court’s main stage in a shattering production by Jeremy Herrin, he’s a truly great playwright. 

He writes naturalistic dialogue that pulses with raw emotion, crackles with wit that sometimes winds you with its stark cruelty, and reveals painful truths about the characters speaking it, even when they don’t necessarily realise how much they’re giving away. Rosie Sheehy and Robert Aramayo play a young couple expecting a baby whose lives are transformed when their twenty week scan reveals an irregularity in the foetus. There’s a bleak poetry to the writing too: “can you close the curtains please? The sun doesn’t make any sense” said by one of the characters in the depths of their sadness, is a line that will stay with me for a long time.

Guess How Much I Love You? deals with the emotional and spiritual fallout from such a devastating discovery. Sounds harrowing? Well, yes it is, inevitably….but it’s also deeply, bloodily humane, surprising, darkly humorous, suffused with love, pain, and masterful visual and verbal storytelling that takes the breath away with its dexterity and invention. Theatrical alchemy happens when writer, cast, director and creative team are all singing from the same tear-stained hymn sheet, and that, thrillingly, is what’s happening here. 

It’s not fair to give away what happens beyond the first scene which finds the young couple in a hospital’s ultrasound room awaiting their consultant’s return, killing time by playing an increasingly spiky and exasperated game of Twenty Questions. It’s the perfect introduction and set-up for a riveting rollercoaster of compassion, trauma and cold hard truth, best experienced by the audience when, like the principal characters, they don’t know what’s coming next. There’s nothing cheap or sensationalist about Norris’ or Herrin’s work though, but part of the play’s raison d’être is to examine, unflinchingly, how humans absorb and rebound from, the unthinkable. 

Sheehy’s extraordinary ability to access an almost unfathomable well of deep feeling has seldom, if ever, been as persuasively demonstrated as it is here. Whether screaming blue murder with the vehemence of a thousand furies, masking her agony with scabrous sarcasm, or her face slack with despair, she is unforgettable. Aramayo matches her every step of the way, as the young man at her side even as she’s pushing him away. He makes his grief vivid and heart-stopping, and manages the not inconsiderable feat of portraying a thoroughly good human but ensuring that he is also utterly fascinating. 

There’s beautiful, sensitive work from Lena Kaur as a NHS midwife (“imagine this but it bankrupts you” says Sheehy’s character at one point). Herrin’s staging is brilliantly modulated, giving full rein to every beat, detail and colour in the text, and goes at a hell of a pace. The lengthy breaks between scenes isn’t just to change Grace Smart’s realistic sets, it’s to give the audience a chance to decompress. Smart’s sets are interesting, they look like actual rooms but claustrophobically hemmed in somehow, as though to visually represent the grim choices facing the couple, until, that is, the very last one when the playing space expands and you can feel the audience members around you allowing themselves to breathe.

Anybody thinking about seeing this remarkable piece of theatre should check the trigger warnings on the website. If you’ve been through some of the experiences depicted here, it may be too distressing to bear. Alternatively, it may provide authentic catharsis, as great art can do: and this IS great art. I am still reeling.