ajhlovestheatre

WE HAD A WORLD 

by Joshua Harmon

directed by Josh Seymour 

Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, London – until 4 July 2026

running time: 100 minutes no interval

https://www.hampsteadtheatre.com/whats-on/2026/we-had-a-world/

Joshua Harmon’s beautifully wrought three hander exploring the turbulent relationship between his mother and her mother, and the far-reaching effects his grandmother has had on his own life, was a critical and commercial success in New York last year. Seeing this note-perfect London premiere directed by Josh Seymour, on Hampstead’s smaller Downstairs stage, though if there’s any justice it’ll have a longer ongoing life, it’s very easy to see why. 

We Had A World is that rare and marvellous thing, a play that is at once intensely personal and specific (these garrulous, angry, loving women could only be Jewish New Yorkers) but also bracingly universal. Who hasn’t felt resentment when their emotional needs aren’t met by those who should love and understand them the most? Who hasn’t sometimes felt like a pawn in an incomprehensible game being played by individuals who should know and behave better? Who hasn’t experienced deep remorse and regret when a tricky, exasperating loved one is no longer around to spar with or check in on? The sensibility, and the tone, which tends to the sentimental but shot through with flashes of gorgeous humour and moments of cold, hard truth, is quintessentially Jewish, but this play is for all of us.

Opening with majestically fierce grandmother Renee (Suzanne Bertish, soaring and searing in a role created last year by Tony winner Joanna Gleason) instructing Joshua to write about their family (“make it as bitter and vitriolic as possible”), Harmon then plays fast and loose with structure as the play zips back and forth through thirty years of rows, upsets, confidences and life-changing moments. Such is the subtle virtuosity of the direction and acting (Ryan Kopel is Joshua, Anna Francolini is his mother Ellen, both are flawless), and the clarity of the writing, that we are never in doubt as to which point we’re at in these people’s lives, despite the unconventional approach to chronology.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen Francolini better than she is here as tetchy, tough-talking but seldom unkind career woman Ellen (“I’m a bitch…it’s one of my best qualities”), perpetually feuding with her (unseen) sister and uneasily aware that wayward Renee is a more glamorous and irresistible figure to young Joshua than she herself is. She’s  not really a bitch of course, as Joshua is quick to point out, but she’s spiky and resentful after a lifetime of hurt and disappointment, and it’s abundantly clear how much she loves her son. Francolini’s multi-layered portrayal shines a light into every crevice of this flawed but essentially good woman; she’s bitterly funny and tremendously affecting in the brief moments when Ellen lets her laconic mask slip. 

Kopel is every bit as impressive as Joshua, traversing the years from impressionable teenager entranced by his free-thinking grandmother but loyal to his embattled mom, through coming out as gay, to successful writer, and back again, with a winning combination of grit and charm. He never overplays the youth of Joshua as a kid, suggesting his essential greenness with a slight shift in stance and the tiniest change in vocal tone. It’s beautiful, unshowy work, ceding the spotlight to the women, but pivotal to the overall success of this intimate, sometimes painfully honest piece. 

Bertish makes a triumphant stage return as incorrigible, free-wheeling Renee. As difficult and unpredictable as she’s loving and hilarious, she’s a clear-eyed survivor with a passion for the arts, her grandson, booze and for riling up her daughter, in roughly that order. It’s a fabulous role, hilarious but too richly textured to subside into mere comic schtick and cliché. It’s impossible to take your eyes off Bertish as she cajoles, manipulates, infuriates everyone around her….and she finds an authentic, tragic nobility in Renee’s final demise (“when you have an especially good time, say, my grandmother is thinking of me….Joshua I’m gonna be watching. From above or below, but I’ll be watching”), even as she rails against Trump from her deathbed (“the great United States is at the mercy of this idiot”). The writing and the performance are both unforgettable.

Within a giant fluorescent-lined box, some sticks of furniture and a small, glacier-shaped object that diminishes as the play progresses, serving perhaps as a metaphor for Renee and Ellen’s relationship as well as an emblem of the environmental concerns that trouble Joshua and a nod to the art that this grandmother introduced her beloved grandson to, are all the visual stimuli we get, and all that we need. Still, Seymour and his designers Sarah Beaton (set and costumes) and Joshua Gadsby (lighting) evoke a New York of museums and theatres and oppressive, lived-in homes. It’s all abstract yet it feels vivid and real.

We Had A World is a total pleasure. A complex but deeply felt and entirely accessible family drama that wears its heart upon its sleeve, and is unafraid to put its audience through the wringer when required. It’s generous, compulsive, and healing with its deep understanding and wry observances of how close family relationships work. A must-see.