Name: Further than the Furthest Thing
Start: 2023-03-09
End: 2023-04-29
Location: Young Vic (Main House)

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Further than the Furthest Thing - LON

Genre: Play

Further than the Furthest Thing

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Born in London in 1967, the Olivier Award-winning actress Jenna Russell is best known for her critically-acclaimed performances in *Sunday in the Park with George*, *[Merrily We Roll Along](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/merrily-we-roll-along)* and *[Fun Home](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/fun-home)*. 

Growing up in Dundee, Russell went on to attend the Sylvia Young Theatre School, one of the country’s leading performing arts schools for school-age children. Pursuing a career in the theatre, Russell went on to appear as Young Sally in *Follies* at the [Shaftesbury Theatre](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/shaftesbury-theatre) in 1987 and *Martin Guerre* at the [Prince Edward Theatre](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/prince-edward-theatre) in 1988. She then joined the company of *[Les Miserables](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/les-miserables)* at the [Palace Theatre](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/palace-theatre), understudying the roles of Fantine and Eponine, before taking over the role of Fantine. In the 1990s, she also joined the [Royal Shakespeare Company](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/actor-profile/royal-shakespeare-company), starring in productions of *The Beggar’s Opera* and *Wildest Dreams*, both staged at the [Barbican](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/barbican). 

Her West End breakthrough came in 2005, when she received an Olivier Award nomination for Best Actress in a Musical as Sally Brown in *Guys and Dolls*. But, Russell won her first Olivier in 2007, taking the award for best actress in a musical for her performance as Dot in *Sunday in the Park with George*. She later reprised the role of Dot on Broadway in the musical’s limited four-month engagement, with Russell receiving a Tony Award nomination.

Russell’s considered to be one of the finest West End actresses working. Her theatre CV includes *Amy's View* alongside [Felicity Kendal](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/actor-profile/felicity-kendal) and two productions of *Into the Woods*, playing Cinderella at the Donmar and the Baker’s Wife at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre. She’s also given an Olivier Award-nominated performance as Mary in *Merrily We Roll Along*, originally revived at the [Menier Chocolate Factory](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/menier-chocolate-factory) and later transferring to the [Harold Pinter Theatre](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/harold-pinter-theatre). In recent years, she’s starred in *Fun Home* at the [Young Vic](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/young-vic), *The Bridges of Madison Count*y at the Menier and played Penelope Pennywise in *Urinetown*.

As well as a glittering theatrical career, Russell is no stranger to the small screen either. She’s perhaps best known for taking over the role of Michelle Fowler in BBC’s *Eastenders* from 2016 to 2018, but she’s also had a leading role in the BBC’s nineties comedy *On the Up*, a British farce written by *Good Life* writer Bob Larbey. In summer 2021, she played Edith Piaf in *Piaf* at Nottingham Playhouse.

Jenna Russell - LON

The Bridges of Madison County [16371]

The Bridges of Madison County

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The Menier Chocolate Factory Theatre opened in 2004. It is located in a former 1870s chocolate factory and is made up of a theatre, a rehearsal space, as well as an on-site restaurant and bar. UK premieres at the Menier Chocolate Factory include *Tick, Tick... Boom!*, *The Color Purple* and *The Last Five Years*. Many musicals staged at the Menier Chocolate Factory transfer to the West End, including *Sunday in the Park with George* and *[Fiddler on the Roof](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/fiddler-on-the-roof)*. 

Menier Chocolate Factory - LON

Menier Chocolate Factory

Fun Home [6152]

Fun Home

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The Young Vic opened on 11 Sept. 1970, and was the first residence of the [National Theatre](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/theatres/national-theatre) under Laurence Olivier. The Young Vic was conceived as a theatre to stage high-quality productions at affordable prices. The theatre was rebuilt from 2004 - 2006, with the Young Vic co-producing 22 shows over 22 months with 20 international companies. Now, the Young Vic features a main house, as well as two studios: Maria and Clare. 

Young Vic - LON

Young Vic (Main House)

Plays rarely get as out there — literally so — as [*Further than the Furthest Thing*](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/show/27149-further-than-the-furthest-thing), the Zinnie Harris theatrical fantasia of sorts which opened in 2000 at the National and was seen off-Broadway, in a separate production, in 2002. Now considered a contemporary classic of sorts, not least for its compelling strangeness, Jennifer Tang revives the play into a prime case of elliptical beauty. 

Tang and a gifted design team, headed by the seemingly ubiquitous Soutra Gilmour here in minimalist mode, stage events in the round, with audiences encircling the action, and actors who sit between scenes in the aisles, directly next to playgoers. 

A deeply moving [Jenna Russell](https://www.londontheatre.co.uk/stars-on-stage/jenna-russell), taking a break from her storied musicals career, has the focal role of the islander Mill. We first encounter this sweet-voiced Scotswoman and her husband Bill (Cyril Nri) out in the remote climes of the South Atlantic archipelago of Tristan da Cunha, though the location is never specified in the script. 

The pair have a nephew, Francis (Archie Madekwe), who returns home from travels abroad after he was reviled for his unusual speech. (The islanders speak a distinctive, ungrammatical patois distinguished, amongst other things, by adding the letter H when saying things like “H’outside”.) Francis has a girlfriend, Rebecca (an impassioned Kirsty Rider), who is pregnant by someone else and who would quite like not to have the baby girl whose birth is evocatively depicted at the close of the first act. 

It’s 1961, and a volcanic eruption displaces this remote populace to the comparative bustle of Southampton, where we find ourselves after the interval — an incident that actually happened to this one-time British dependency. What transpires is an empathically imagined investigation into what we mean by “home”, folded into an often-grim parable of acculturation. 

The Anglo-Bangladeshi vocalist Shapla Salique adds to the play’s aural allure. 
Mill finds herself puzzling out “puddings” as if the very meaning of that British mainstay were somehow alien to her sense of self. The self-appointed chaplain of the island from which he has been evacuated, Bill gets tested in his own way — subsumed by grief and guilt as he and his wife discover a land of umbrellas and royalty, not seaweed seeping over one’s shoes. 

The play features a conjurer-villain of sorts in Gerald Kyd’s Mr. Hansen, a South African factory owner who is revealed to be less charming than first thought. A jar manufacturer, Mr. Hansen exists to upend tradition, bringing with him the promise of money which isn’t enough for such stalwarts as Mill, who exists in mourning for a vanished, and vanishing, way of life. 

The quintet on view is gradually seen to exist within the context of larger, impersonal forces — colonial misrule, for one thing — that flavours a play that may seem elusive at first but coalesces in the mind after the fact. 

That’s especially true of a staging as alert as this one to the imaginative reach of a text that unapologetically makes demands upon its audience: quite a few spectators disappeared at the interval, though those who stayed proffered a rousing response at the bows. Gilmour’s turntable design proffers an amphitheatre given shape and depth by Prema Mehta’s lighting and George Dennis’s sound design: joint contributors to the arresting otherness of the occasion. 

Ian William Galloway’s video design ramps up the atmospherics of a play that seems to have sprung from Harris in defiance of the time-honoured dictum to write what you know: the author on this occasion has been emboldened by inspiration and invention, not direct experience. 

Her play benefits no end from a cast who seem visibly affected by the tale they are telling: Russell, in particular, looked appropriately misty-eyed following a ravishing monologue to find musicality of an altogether different kind in the verbal idiosyncrasies at work here. This performer is given brief passages of song for those wanting a reminder of the career that has brought her to this place, to which she responds with a deeply visceral connection that finds meaning in the mysterious. Stick with it, and you may well, too.

*Further than the Furthest Thing* is at the Young Vic through 29 April. Book *Further than the Furthest Thing* tickets on London Theatre.

[![Book Tickets CTA - LT/NYTG](//images.ctfassets.net/6pezt69ih962/3qAtGOdQq9x3k1WcHlaJnw/90ece91bbe47ed07e142c2e43c7a7a3f/BookTickets-250.png)](https://ticket.londontheatre.co.uk/booking/calendar?product_id=27149&content_product_id=27149&venue_id=173)

*Photo credit: Jenna Russell (centre), Gerald Kyd, Archie Madekwe and Cyril Nri in Further than the Furthest Thing at Young Vic (Photo by Marc Brenner)*

'Further than the Furthest Thing' review — a deeply visceral play finds meaning in the mysterious

Read our four-star review of Zinnie Harris's *Further than the Furthest Thing* starring Jenna Russell at the Young Vic, with performances through 29 April.

Born in London in 1967, the Olivier Award-winning actress Jenna Russell is best known for her critically-acclaimed performances in Sunday in the Park with George, Merrily We Roll Along and Fun Home.

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