The Murmuration of Starlings at Seven Dials Playhouse Review
Written by Jasmine for Theatre and Tonic
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review
‘The Murmuration of Starlings’ is a heartfelt play that reframes memory loss as a monster haunting the lives of a couple who have been married for decades. Written by Joe Graham, this is a show that will no doubt resonate with you if you have experienced a family member struggling with their memory or the personality shifts associated with certain types of dementia - that is certainly what resonated most for me.
I love the idea of having this experience reframed as a monster, though I would have liked the metaphor to be a bit more clearly developed, as I would have loved to know more about the fictionalised logic/world where this predator is hunting people. The way this related to ‘reality’ and how real it was to people wasn’t always clear; not everything that was mentioned/breadcrumbed throughout or how characters relate to/feel about each other was resolved by the ending. However, within this, there were moments where it worked beautifully; the predator striking people down with headaches, the idea that it could have taken over you without you knowing - it all just needed the logic of their realities, locations, and timelines to be brought together with more clarity.
Throughout the play, the actors do a brilliant job of bringing their characters to life and making them really likeable even at the moments where the characters aren’t acting like their best selves due to the threat of the predator or memory loss. So much of the show hinges on Steve Hay’s performance as ‘The Man’, and he navigates the shifts in his personality in a way that never loses the audience’s sympathy and always makes you want to know more. He and Jonny Dagnell as ‘The Boy’ make excellent counterparts to each other, and Dagnell is able to find clear intentions and a sense of certainty in a character that often doesn’t know where he is, giving us a clear thread to follow as the audience. Hay and Jenny Johns as ‘The Woman’ are a moving and convincing couple, and the way we experience certain moments through her responses to them is often the most affecting moments of the production.
Jennifer Barton also brings ‘The Girl’ to life as a young woman with a certainty about her sense of self and sense of fun, which makes her scenes with ‘The Boy’ lovely to watch, even if the setup of the romance is a little unconvincing. It would have been nice to see these people fall in love with each other by getting to know one another, rather than on the rather faulty logic of ‘love at first sight’, especially in their story, as a way of getting to know the older couple’s relationship better. Throughout the show, whilst the characters were beautifully performed, I simply wanted to know and understand more about them as individuals to really feel what the ‘predator’ was trying to take away.
Throughout the show, I was impressed by the time they have spent designing beautiful projections and backgrounds, and when these feel the most of the character’s world - a light shining out from a corner or characters responding to what they see - they are at their most effective. The sound design was also lovely, elevating feelings of wonder that characters experience and adding resonance to moments of stillness - especially in the moment when Jenny Johns is alone onstage and we get to see into her world for a moment.
‘The Murmuration of Starlings’ is a sincere and often moving production with a fabulous cast, one that I would just love to see the existing elements developed with greater depth and clarity for it to really have the impact it could have. Nonetheless, it is an ambitious and thoughtful piece of new writing that gives us a really effective new angle through which to see experiences that are so hard to express accurately, and which therefore, is a rare story that actually expresses both the perspective of the person losing their memory and the person caring for them with real impact.
Plays until 14 March 2026
★★★
