REVIEW: THE NAME by Jon Fosse at White Bear Theatre19 May – 6 June 2026

‘a very welcome UK premiere’ ★★★★

For anyone not familiar with the work of Nobel-prize winner Jon Fosse, this is a valuable introduction. The Name is his second play, first performed in 1995 during the Bergen International Festival, it was awarded the Norwegian Ibsen Award. It tells the story of a pregnant girl forced to come home with the father of the child as they have nowhere else to go. This production is highly recommended for anyone who enjoys Nordic-noir, with its take on a family living by the sea and their dysfunctional dynamics. Their failure to communicate with each other is drip fed throughout the play until the final denouement, a painful discovery which ends the play with a gut punch.

The living room set, by Anthony Lamble, is appropriately gloomy and the sound design, mainly footsteps from the family coming and going in the house, adds a feeling of empty spaces with little soft furnishings to cushion the family. It’s an appropriate symbol of the harshness of their lives, the often repeated phrases, the lack of empathy and the personal needs which fail to be addressed. The father, brilliantly portrayed by Tony Bell, is so recognisable in his closed in state, that it is heart-breaking.   

The long suffering mother, played immaculately by Valerie Gogan is one of the victims of the piece. There are glimmers of hope with the sister (Marie Thorseth Molnes) who brings a breath of fresh air, and the boy (Daf Thomas), whose imagination shines through. 

In an interesting episode in the play, the boy fantasises about the life of unborn babies thinking about where they will be born, and dreading the pain of their birth. It’s nicely performed by Thomas, a difficult role to play as he treads the line of being the stranger in the house, with all the discomfort of meeting the girl’s parents for the first time, he reads to fill in the time.   Perhaps this is a comment on how much literature broadens the mind.

If the play sounds rather dour, there are moments of humour to lighten the load, and potentially there could be many more (this might change from performance to performance). Just a mild niggle, and a question whether Jasmin Dufa Pitt who plays the girl,  could have more of a sense of what is meant when she says ‘you don’t care’ a refrain throughout the play. It is so loaded, with so many different possibilities, that a sense of intent, might have given the character more of an inner life.   In addition to this bothersome thought, her bump was four or five months, rather than nine months making nonsense of her imminent birth and her sister saying, ‘you’re so big’.

Hardly major concerns to put anyone off seeing this very welcome UK premiere, with fine direction from Simon Usher, who used the White Bear tiny space to perfection, giving a sense of place: The  claustrophobia of the house and the proximity of the sea outside opening onto a world of wider of possibilities just beyond the reach of the parents but giving hope for the youngsters. There are many fine moments in the production which do justice to Fosse’s highly regarded play in this translation by Gregory Motton.  

Hornsey-Pennell Productions Presents:

The Name by Jon Fosse

Translated by Gregory Motton

White Bear Theatre, Kennington

19 May – 6 June 2026

BOX OFFICE https://www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk/whatson/the-name

Cast:

Jasmin Dufa Pitt (Girl)

Daf Thomas (Boy)

Valerie Gogan (Mother)

Tony Bell (Father)

Marie Thorseth Molnes (Sister)

Jan Martin (Bjarne)

Creatives:

Simon Usher - Director

Anthony Lamble – Set design

Malcolm Gluck and Saurabh Agarwal – Executive Producers

Photography: Charlie Usher