End review – Saskia Reeves and Clive Owen draw couples trilogy to a tender close

Dorfman theatre, London
David Eldridge’s two-hander depicts the difficult conversations that follow one partner’s cancer diagnosis

David Eldridge’s trilogy has travelled across the early and mid stages of coupledom to come to this finish. The play marks the end of an era in more ways than one. Programmed in Rufus Norris’s final season as the National Theatre’s director, it is also a farewell for the couple at its centre. This is grown up, bittersweet fare that brings with it a full-bodied reflection on the end that awaits us all: death.

A natural order was branded into Eldridge’s previous two plays – Beginning was about the heady spark of a first romance, Middle the sag of an established relationship. This one grapples with a more unforeseen end. Alfie (Clive Owen) is a DJ in his 50s who made his name on the acid house scene. Julie (Saskia Reeves) is a successful novelist. His terminal cancer diagnosis is announced in the opening lines and the play becomes a reflection on what happens when a lifetime of togetherness meets mortality.