The Unbelievers at the Royal Court Theatre
The disappearance of a child grips the collective mind in a way few other tragedies can. It is both unimaginable and inescapable, too vast to comprehend. Few cases have haunted the public quite like that of Madeleine McCann, who vanished in 2007 and was never found. Her name still surfaces in headlines. The world cannot bring itself to let her go.
Nick Payne’s new play, The Unbelievers, which has just opened at the Royal Court Theatre, takes us into this territory of absence and obsession. The story centres on Oscar, a teenager who goes missing one day and never returns. His disappearance fractures his family, leaving them scattered in grief. Directed by Marianne Elliott, the play unfolds across three intertwined timelines: the immediate aftermath of the disappearance, the early investigation, and seven years on. The scenes do not appear in chronological order. Instead, the story skips between past and present, pulling the audience into a looping sense of confusion and loss. At times, the structure feels difficult to follow, but the uncertainty mirrors the family’s experience, trapped in a time that has stopped moving.
The heart of the production is Miriam (Nicola Walker), Oscar’s mother, who delivers a performance of startling intensity. Her unravelling is slow, painful, and frighteningly convincing. By the end of the play, she has descended into what can only be described as psychosis. Her face is blurred by exhaustion, her eyes flickering with despair. Walker is both magnetic and harrowing, leaving us emptied by the sheer force of her collapse.
Paul Higgins plays Oscar’s father, a man caught between mourning and survival. He brings warmth and humour to the role, his awkward, slightly nerdy manner offering brief relief from the surrounding sorrow. Seven years after Oscar’s disappearance, he has found a new partner and a fragile peace. He suggests holding a wake for his son, a gesture that Miriam cannot accept. He is ready to live again, while she cannot leave the abyss.
Their two daughters, Margaret (Ella Lily Hyland) and Nancy (Alby Baldwin), embody opposite responses to grief. Margaret is pragmatic, determined to move forward. Nancy, a musician, remains caught in the past. Haunted by her brother’s ghost, she attempts to reach him in a séance and, halfway through the play, sings beautifully. For a moment, the chaos pauses. Her voice turns the stage into something almost sacred before the mayhem resumes.
Miriam’s first husband, Karl (Martin Marquez), a former boozer, has become a vicar. He hovers uneasily around the family’s suffering, offering prayers that cannot touch the enormity of their loss. His presence is a reminder of faith’s limitations. In this world, there is no divine order, no comfort, no answer to the question of why.
Payne threads funny moments through the tragedy. In one scene, the family gathers for lunch with the “new partners”. The father’s girlfriend (Lucy Thackeray) is bubbly and kind but hopelessly out of place, her cheerfulness clashing with the family’s grief. Nancy’s boyfriend (Harry Kershaw), a puffin specialist, speaks with a hilariously flat cadence. Both characters laugh too easily and too loudly, their presence almost unbearable. The humour feels almost too easy, but the relief it brings is undeniable.
“I wish there was a word,” Miriam says. “Pool. I feel like a pool…a pool of water.” It’s a line that captures the impossibility of expressing such grief. The Unbelievers is not simply about the unbelievably tragic but about the indescribable, about the point where words collapse under the weight of loss.
Constance Ayrton
Photos: Brinkhoff Moegenburg
The Unbelievers was at the Royal Court Theatre. For further information, visit the theatre’s website here.
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