Harrowing play about a couple facing a dilemma

Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court

The Royal Court’s 70th anniversary season got off to a tremendous start with a new play by Luke Norris, directed by Jeremy Herrin. The story of how a couple nearly fall apart when faced with a terrible decision during her pregnancy was harrowing, the critics all agreed and gave 4 and 5 stars. Only one dissenter gave 2 stars, calling it ‘grief porn’. Rosie Sheehy was highly praised for her no holds barred performance as the woman.

[Links to full reviews are included but a number are behind paywalls and therefore may not be accessible]

5 stars ★★★★★

The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar said it was ‘a harrowing portrait of pregnancy and grief, plumbing the depths of sorrow within a marriage. But it is not only that. It is funny and profound, intense without ever becoming overwrought.’ She continued: ‘Plot twists bring shock and dread, but alongside this there is both whimsy and deep rumination on mortality’. She concluded: ‘This is a tear-jerker with 100% heart, 0% sentimentality. What a start to the Royal Court’s 70th anniversary season. What an emotional tour de force.’

4 stars ★★★★

The Independent’s Alice Saville explained: ‘It starts with a couple at their 20-week antenatal scan, their hope visibly curdling as they realise the road ahead isn’t the sweetly straightforward one they’d imagined. Then, it follows them to the proverbial hell and back, in an emotionally exhausting journey through suffering and redemption.’ She reassured us: ‘For all its overpowering bleakness, there’s something ultimately hopeful about Norris’s play, and the way that he details every hideous contour of this pair’s suffering – then shows us that this, too, is survivable.’

In a typically perceptive review, Sam Marlowe’s reported in The Stage: ‘Norris’ chamber drama, wrapped around a couple in their 30s, Him (Robert Aramayo) and Her (Rosie Sheehy), is a sort of gloriously profane hymn to hope and human resilience, and to love; mingled with the obliterating pain is passion and poetry, tenderness and laughter, faith and deep despair. It’s mercilessly concentrated and intimate, almost as if the characters are being gradually stripped of their skin. And yet the writing also exudes a profound compassion.’

‘This harrowingly powerful play by Luke Norris about grief, loss and love features exceptional performances from Rosie Sheehy and Robert Aramayo’  began The Standard’s Nick Curtis, and continued: ‘What follows is hard to watch but impossible to tear your eyes from. It’s as bleak as Beckett but also brutally funny and agonizingly empathetic.’ He declared: ‘Norris, an accomplished actor as well as a writer with a growing reputation, knows how to compose dialogue that addresses the unsayable but also embraces the unsaid.’

Anya Ryan at LondonTheatre described how the couple cope: ‘Together, they circle their options, fracture, and test the limits of their love. From the one central, damning dilemma, Norris’ script opens out into an examination of human feeling at its most raw: passion, guilt, impossible inner battles, and grief without reprieve.’ She was particularly impressed by Rosie Sheehy: ‘Continuing her reign as one of the country’s finest stage actors, Sheehy is nothing short of extraordinary. Flitting from sharp sarcasm to raw, animalistic despair, she behaves like a body reacting before her mind has time to catch up.’

WhatsOnStage’s Sarah Crompton commented: ‘For all the agony, Guess How Much I Love You? is a play illuminated by love. It takes an extreme version of the fears facing every couple who have ever tried for a baby and examines it with compassion and sensitivity. It doesn’t have any huge relevance beyond itself, but it does shine a light on ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances and lets them live on stage.’

The Times’ Dominic Maxwell praised the two leads: ‘   Aramayo is terrific as the more passive partner trying to be supportive, straining to stay included.’ He concluded: ‘Yes, I chafed slightly at some overwriting, but the last half hour moved and gripped me entirely. It is not easy. It is not exactly enjoyable. And yet this smartly observed, cannily constructed, beautifully performed play will stay with me.’

Time Out’s Andrzej Lukowski agreed it ‘does ring painfully emotionally true.’ He pointed out: ‘The sense of paring things back is matched by Jeremy Herrin’s production, which is naturalistic and uncluttered. But there’s a little more to it than that. The relative lack of other cast members (Lena Kaur plays a midwife in one scene) and the fact Grace Smart’s sets don’t tend to fill the stage, but rather sit in inky pools of darkness, gives it an unsettling, claustrophobic feel.’

Debbie Gilpin for BroadwayWorld found it ‘a thought-provoking play that is full of humanity, with a great many moments of lightness which balance out the dark topics at its core; it’s a reminder that although grief can and will persist, so does hope.’

Aleks Sierz at The Arts Desk declared: ‘Sheehy and Aramayo take us on a journey that is both agonising yet also affirmative of the power of love’s survival in a climate of adversity. It’s a very hard watch, but also, by the end, oddly uplifting. A good balance, right? At the same time it’s a demonstration not only of the power of theatre to dig into common, if also taboo-charged, experiences, but likewise a testament to the relevance of the Royal Court’s project of staging the best, and most beautiful, intense new writing it can find. Happy 70th!’

2 stars ★★

Claire Allfree at the Telegraph was the one dissenting voice: ‘while Norris is clearly motivated by the need to tell a ghastly story that could affect any prospective parent, his subject feels like a creative cop-out. Landing smack alongside the debate over grief porn generated by Hamnet and H is for Hawk, his play insists we respond from the gut to his couple’s predicament, or not at all. And if we don’t, he has nothing to offer us. There is an occasional nod to religious sensibilities but it’s low stakes stuff. Another writer might have given us a chewy back and forth debate on the ethics of the couple’s dilemma. Norris essentially dramatises only how it makes them feel.’

Critics’ Average Rating 3.9⭑

Guess How Much I Love You? can be seen at Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, Royal Court, until 21 February 2026

If you’ve seen Guess How Much I Love You? please leave a review and/or rating below