REVIEW: SEA WALL by Simon Stephens at The Old Red Lion 4 – 8 March 2025

'feels heartbreakingly real' ★★★★

Some plays are, for better or worse, associated as much with a specific actor as with their storylines. Think of Fleabag, and you think of Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Think of Jerusalem, and Mark Rylance pops up. Meanwhile Sea Wall, Simon Stephens‘ monologue about grief, seems indelibly welded to Andrew Scott, who shot to fame around the time of its performance and reprised the role in a celebrated COVID-era recording. 

What's the point of all this? Simply that tackling this kind of play, as an actor, is a gamble. If you try, you're fighting on two fronts: not just to bring across your character and their truth, but to erase the audience's preconceptions and not fail the comparison game. 

Thankfully, Conor Craig-Stephens smashes it. 

Sea Wall's premise is simple: A young-ish photographer called Alex, alone, unspools the painful story of his life and loves and how he came to have a great big hole in his chest. At 35 minutes and with no other characters, it's an intense plunge into regret, loss and philosophy that leaves the actor with no place to hide. Craig-Stephens has heightened this vulnerability even more than the trappings of a West End stage allow, dispensing with any set, sound effects or lighting tricks. He enters the empty space in silence, a single water bottle clutched in his hand, and stays in one spot for most of the play. 

On the first night, Craig-Stephens' start was slightly stiff, a little disconnected from the audience in front of him. But as he eased into the story, his contact became spontaneous and natural. His performance is raw, honest and, occasionally, very funny. Of course, it's a testament to Simon Stephen's writing that the character can slide from poetry to jokes and back again—but that doesn't make it less hard to spend half an hour playing a man in emotional anguish and still get regular laughs. Craig-Stephens pulls it off. At the very end, his minimalistic approach slid into more movement, more gestures, that could have been reined back in. But nit-picks aside, there's no denying two things: His Alex feels heartbreakingly real, and the audience was hanging onto every word.

A short, delicate pleasure.

SEA WALL by Simon Stephens at The Old Red Lion 4 – 8 March 2025

Box Office 

Performed by Conor Craig-Stephens