Review: Grace Pervades
[Theatre Royal Haymarket || April 24th to July 11th 2026]
Though written a full five decades apart, there are remarkable similarities between David Hare’s Teeth ‘n’ Smiles, which recently finished a revival run at the Duke of York’s Theatre, and his most recent work, Grace Pervades, which transfers to London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket following a sold-out run at the Theatre Royal Bath (no relation) last year. Both texts are prickly in their portrayal of rebels and changemakers, celebrating them while also attempting to navigate an uneasy clash between radicalism and tradition, and both place women artists at the centre of their narratives. Both texts are also a little chauvinistic - Grace Pervades less so than Teeth ‘n’ Smiles, but Hare’s pompous masculinity and paternalism are apparent here too - and there’s a clunky patriotism running through them both that simultaneously reveres and is cautious of Englishness and English culture.
Set over almost a century, from 1878 to 1966, Grace Pervades tells the story of Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, two of the most famous and influential theatre actors of the Victorian age, and Terry’s two children, Edith and Edward Gordon Craig, both of whom also worked in theatre for most of their lives. Told in a non-chronological format, with Edith and Edward’s reflections on their mother’s life framing the drama, the text explores how theatre changed and evolved over the century, focusing in particular on Irving and Terry’s work at the Lyceum Theatre and the conflict between his meticulous, managerial approach and her more innate, naturalistic style of acting. The relationship between the two forms the emotional core of the story, with the Craig siblings’ work fading into the backdrop.
Fiennes and Raison both do solid work as Irving and Terry, and the play is at its best when the two of them are alone on stage. Fiennes has a tendency to ham it up but it works at capturing Irving’s seemingly congenital exasperation with life and himself, and he has a pleasant chemistry with Raison, who brings to life a character who, as she did in reality, often plays the supporting role to Irving’s overbearing lead. The two of them extract light humour from Hare’s script, which is often much too sardonic and knowing, and they are both adept at toning things down and wading through the sludge of some pretty overwritten drama to find something heartfelt and emotionally affecting in it when needed.
However, the primary problem is that Hare’s script is hagiographic. He is reluctant to treat Irving and Terry as real people with real, human flaws. Their relationship and interactions lack emotional weight because he never commits to unpicking them beyond the confines of their impact on British theatre and their different approaches to their craft. When tragedy befalls either or both of them, there’s no sense that it matters because Hare doesn’t do enough of the groundwork to make us care, in part because the framing device and the constant leaping around in time results in staccato pacing that regularly undermines the various moods he’s trying to create throughout the piece.
Unfortunate, too, is how stuffy and uninspired much of the staging and direction are. Herrin’s approach is very traditional and “period”, and though the clash between this and the celebrated radicalism and ingenuity of Terry is interesting, it never feels as though the juxtaposition is intentional because it isn’t explored in any real depth. There’s a slow, soporific quality to both the drab design of the production and the performances which, outside of Fiennes and Raison, are strained and underwhelming. Given it’s a play about theatre and about how theatre, for all of its limitations, matters so much, it’s particularly disappointing just how devoid of energy and spark so much of this is.
Grace Pervades isn’t terrible but in a sense it’s almost worse because it’s tedious. Despite a few moments of humour and two perfectly solid turns by the leads, it’s a play in which Hare takes two undoubtedly fascinating people and reduces their story to one that is uninteresting and pedestrian. At no point does the clunky, exposition-laden dialogue ever capture the sense that these people are as significant or consequential as Hare believes that they are, and so we are instead left to wander through a perfunctory and uninspiring drama about a few people trying to produce successful and exciting theatre. How ironic.
Tickets for Grace Pervades are available here.