Review: Learning How To Dive, White Bear Theatre

Stephen Sondheim said the inspiration for Sunday in the Park with George  was what’s missing from Seurat’s painting La Grande Jatte: the artist himself. In Brendan Murray’s tender new semi-autobiographical play, Learning How To Dive at the White Bear Theatre, the missing figure is Barry — a man who never appears, yet dominates throughout. 

Act one opens in what feels like a cramped, slightly airless flat. Terry (played by Murray), a grey-haired man in his seventies, shuffles in wearing pyjamas, a zip-up cardigan and socks and sandals. The set is stripped right back: a table, a couple of chairs, nowhere to hide. 

Then the doorbell goes, and in strides Matt (Darren Cheek), a middle-aged man in a leather jacket, carrying the kind of anger that he’s trying to supress. He’s there to deliver a package that once belonged to his father. Alongside it is an unposted letter addressed to Terry — a letter that detonates everything. Matt’s father was Barry who has recently died and for the past 35 years Barry and Terry have been having a secret relationship. 

Terry didn’t even know Barry was gone; Matt didn’t know his father was gay, let alone living a parallel life. The initial confrontation is prickly and guarded, but as Matt’s defences start to crack and as whisky is drunk, the play opens out into something more complicated: two men talking about the same person, but from completely different angles — grief, resentment, longing and disbelief all jostling for space around that table. 

Act two shifts location and tone. The furniture is the same — a table, two chairs — but now the room is smarter: a tablecloth, colourful rug, a sense of order. In walks Jill (Karen Spicer), Barry’s wife, dressed in black and freshly returned from the funeral. She moves around the space with the quiet efficiency of someone who’s spent a lifetime keeping things together. She talks to Barry as if he’s still there and in a way, he is. 

Then comes the play’s neat structural twist: act two takes place in time before act one. Jill discovers Barry’s briefcase and inside it is the same package Matt will later deliver to Terry. The secrets start to surface — Jill had her suspicions, but not the truth: that Barry’s long-term affair was a gay one. 

Murray’s writing is gentle, almost old-fashioned in its refusal to sensationalise. This is not a play about scandal; it’s about the aftershocks of a life built on omission. It takes a familiar situation and rotates it, giving us three perspectives on one man — and showing how love can be both sustaining and selfish. 

Terry knows all about Jill and the family — Jill knows nothing about Terry. They never meet, yet the play quietly forges a kinship between them: two people who loved the same flawed man, both left holding the weight of what he couldn’t speak out loud. 

All three performances are beautifully judged. Murray perfectly captures Terry’s vulnerability. Cheek is superb as Matt, letting the character’s belligerence soften into something raw and human. Spicer, meanwhile, brings extraordinary control to Jill: poised, bruised, and slowly recalibrating the story of her own marriage. Director Willie Elliott trusts the silences, letting the pauses do the heavy lifting — and in a piece like this, that’s exactly the right call. 

Learning How To Dive is moving and quietly uplifting: a small play with a big emotional reach. Producer Damn Cheek’s motto is “Theatre to Provoke, Entertain and Inspire” — and this production achieves all three. Do go – you may well leave with damp eyes but a full heart. 

Written by: Brendan Murray
Directed by: Willie Elliott
Produced by: Damn Cheek

Learning How To Dive plays at the White Bear Theatre until Saturday 21 February.