David Farnor | On 26, Jun 2021

Exponential growth. Those two words are perhaps the epitome of the past year, packed with horror, indescribable grief and a mathematical and statistical scale that is hard to process. Together, Dennis Kelly’s new drama, brings home the personal significance of that phrase with a harrowing, devastating clarity, as Sharon Horgan’s wife and mother talks about loss.

The line between personal and political has, in some ways, been widened in the past year, even as the boundary between state and personal responsibility has been blurred. But Together’s masterful achievement is to capture how intertwined the personal and politically are, putting every beat of a couple’s journey through the coronavirus pandemic in its wider context. That’s largely thanks to a recurring device of having each character talk to camera, a stagey concept that could be insufferable but actually makes this montage of monologues more immersive, relatable and engaging.

James McAvoy is firing on all cylinders as “He”, who rockets back and forth between justifying his own views and business decisions and confronting his own feelings for “She”, and Horgan is impeccable as the also-unnamed spouse, trying to work out how she feels about him and his work, while they both try to adjust to a world where queuing for supermarkets has become a norm.

All set within the confines of their home, the result is superbly acted and directed, a challenging and cathartic ride through all too recent history that is funny, tragic and resonant all at once.

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