By Aline Mahrud

WORTH A LOOK?: ***1/2

WHEN?: Friday 20 February, opens 24 February and runs through 11 April 2026 RUNTIME: 85 minutes (no interval)

Anastasia Hille (A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Young Vic) plays Jennifer, a woman marrying late and nervous about how she is perceived by her soon-to-be stepdaughter.

• Read on for reasons including how meditating on grief, acceptance, unexpected love and finding contentment where you never dared look are themes that feel universal

Making her stage debut, Erin Kellyman is that stepdaughter Delilah who is so consumed by the loss of her actual mother that she starts to see her and loses time, the titular evening all afternoon, mourning that loss and resenting the new stepmother in her life.

Evening All Afternoon is both a 2-hander and world premiere of a new play by Anna Ziegler (Photograph 51, Noel Coward Theatre) and the venue for this intimate yet also claustrophobic look at 2 very different points of view couldn’t be more apt.

Hille as stepmother Jennifer is surprised she is marrying at a point late in her life when she is older than the man she’s getting hitched to and desperate to better understand the alien language (FOMO, for example) she has to Google deployed by her new stepdaughter.

Kellyman’s stepdaughter Delilah is struggling with her studies, can’t quite accept anyone attempting to fill the hole left by her late mother and pushes back in grief at any reconciliatory hand.

Director Diyan Zora initially gives us a very binary look at the world augmented by a revolve, a simple setting and a shelf of the stepmother’s possessions that start to go missing.

Later that shelf becomes the space below a Christmas tree where presents are offered in an exchange of love.

But before then we’re presented with 2 women who can’t agree on a movie or what to watch on TV so settle for a short nature documentary about the last 2 rhinos in a particular breed – a mother and daughter – and how they are doomed to each other’s company, 1 eventually dying alone grieving for the other.

A gun appears – or does it? – in the 3rd act when the tension is ratcheted up for dramatic effect that the writing doesn’t quite feel that it has earned.

But the relationship is well drawn between the stage veteran Hille and the newcomer Kellyman.

Their characters can be infuriating – we found ourselves siding with the stepmother but expect others to disagree – and yet the final message about meditating on grief, acceptance, unexpected love and finding contentment where you never dared look feel universal.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Donmar Warehouse Tickets
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