In the same week that the UK Government pledged legislation to curb social media use among under-16s, Fran Kranz’s Mass arrives at the Donmar Warehouse as a sobering reminder of how profoundly the world our children inhabit can shape, and sometimes devastate, lives. It is only one of many thorny issues touched upon in an utterly absorbing and shattering piece of theatre.
Mass is the stage adaptation of Kranz’s 2021 film, first seen at Sundance. While Kranz directed the original screen version, this production is helmed by Carrie Cracknell, who brings the work into the Donmar’s intimate space with a series of subtle but telling adjustments. The shift from screen to stage strips the story back even further, demanding total attention on language, listening and performance.
Two sets of parents come face to face. Jay and Gail lost their son in a fatal school shooting. Richard and Linda lost theirs too, but as the perpetrator of the violence, who finally took his own life. Brought together by mediator Kendra (Rochelle Rose), they sit down in a church conference room to talk through their shared, but very different, grief and to try to make some sense of a tragedy that resists understanding.
Years have passed, and the air between them is thick with unspoken history. The setting is deliberately neutral: an episcopal church meeting room, briefly overseen by volunteer caretakers Judy (Susie Trayling) and Brandon (Amari Bacchus), before the four parents are left alone. What follows is disarmingly simple. For the best part of 100 minutes, Mass is nothing more, and nothing less, than four broken people talking, remembering, recoiling and, occasionally, reaching out.
It is undeniably heavy going. Every sentence spoken seems weighted with loss, every pause carries the threat of emotional collapse. There are tentative moments of warmth and understanding, but also jolting flashes of anger and recrimination. Both couples are circling the same impossible desire: to have their sons back. When that cannot happen, the play asks, what might resolution even look like?
Restorative justice hovers on the edges of the piece. James Graham’s Punch placed that process front and centre, but Mass is far more interested in the raw encounter itself, and in what happens when people with incompatible griefs are forced into the same room. Cracknell wisely allows the play to unfold without embellishment, trusting both the text and the performers to carry the weight.
They do so magnificently. Lyndsey Marshal’s Gail sets the emotional temperature of the evening. Initially tight with nerves, her speech clipped and defensive, she gradually reveals a steely resilience that feels painfully earned rather than theatrically inflated. You sense the effort it takes for Gail simply to stay in the room.
Monica Dolan delivers an astonishing performance as Linda. From the moment she enters, her body seems racked with terror, her fear and shame entirely visible. Dolan charts Linda’s emotional journey with extraordinary precision, allowing vulnerability, fury and self-reproach to surface without a trace of sentimentality. It is a performance of raw exposure and formidable control.
Adeel Akhtar’s Jay initially appears accommodating, almost overly reasonable, but this careful surface cracks as the meeting progresses. When his anger erupts it is shocking in its force, and when it collapses, it gives way to a devastating sense of hollowness. Akhtar makes Jay’s contradictions feel utterly human. Paul Hilton’s Richard is its sombre counterpoint. Reserved and withdrawn, his apparent placation slowly reveals itself as a coping mechanism for unimaginable guilt. Hilton’s restraint is deeply affecting, allowing Richard’s pain to seep through in glances and half-finished thoughts.
Anna Yates’ set design is deceptively simple and highly effective. The conference room, furnished only with a table and four chairs, sits within a meticulously detailed two-storey church interior visible through glass walls. Though largely unused, this surrounding space grounds the action in a recognisable public setting, heightening the sense that we are witnessing something intensely private in plain sight.
The quiet brilliance of the staging is most apparent in the slow rotation of the table on a revolve. The movement is so gradual it is almost imperceptible, until you realise that, without anyone standing up, you have caught every character’s eye. The audience, like the parents, cannot escape. It is an elegant theatrical device that deepens immersion and gently echoes the film’s shifting perspectives.
Mass holds the audience in rapt, forward-leaning attention. Like its film counterpart, it leaves you shaken, reflective and emotionally spent. Yet in the Donmar’s close confines, the experience feels even more immediate and confronting. This is theatre that offers no easy answers, but in its honesty, restraint and devastating performances, it achieves something quite extraordinary.
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