Andrew Scott unforgettable in Simon Stephens’ astounding play

★★★★★

If you’ve seen Andrew Scott as Moriarty in Sherlock or the hot priest in Fleabag or Hamlet or in Present Laughter, you know he’s a great actor. After seeing this, you may well think he is the greatest actor we have.

I don’t want to say too much about what the plot because I don’t want to spoil the impact. Let’s just say it’s a one-man play featuring a father called Alex telling us a story from his life. I can tell you that while it has its amusing moments, it is not a comedy. Alex says at one point “There’s a hole running through the centre of my stomach.”

I would like to talk about Andrew Scott. What you experience is acting of the purest kind. He hesitates. He doesn’t finish his sentences. There’s a moment when he’s about to say something and pauses- and as you wait for him to finish, time seems to be suspended.

His delivery is so natural, that it seems like he’s just talking to you. Yet it absolutely is acting because it has a poetic rhythm and his body language- the way he might giggle or cover his face or stare into space- all tell you what he’s not saying, tell you that this is more than a nice story about holidays in the south of France and the charms of his daughter and father-in-law.

Andrew Scott has the ability of a great actor to not only engage you but involve you. He draws you into his heart so you feel what he feels.

Great acting needs a great script and here every word, every phrase, every incident, every little detail- the colour of a dress, some athlete’s foot cream- seem precisely chosen by Simon Stephens to make a point about how life or even perhaps God mocks our love of it, because it is a story about life’s uncertainties, about not knowing what’s round the corner, like when he goes scuba diving and is suddenly plunged into the blackness beyond the sea wall.

The play lasts just over thirty minutes but every word and gesture counts so much that it concentrates into that half hour, as much emotional impact as a four hour epic.

This is not a film of a stage performance. Andrew Scott first performed Sea Wall in 2008 and has revived it in theatres a number of times, most recently at the Old Vic in 2018. This is a film made in a studio around 2012. But, despite being a film, nothing distracts from the acting. There are no cinematic tricks and no background music. There’s natural light. The camera is fixed and we always see his whole body. It appears to be done in one take.

I don’t want to give any more away, I may have said too much already. Please see it for yourself. You will never forget it.

You can watch it on YouTube for free until 25 May-ish and after that you can still pay to rent or download it from Vimeo. In fact I would recommend spending the £5 and download it because the more times you watch this you more you will get out of it. Full details can be found at seawallandrewscott.com