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The Height of the Storm “offers a deeply moving study of love, loss and the unbearable pain of absence” (Billington, 2018). It is also a play about uncertainty, twilight years, and couple and family dynamics.
The play centres around an elderly couple, André and Madeleine (played by Jonathan Pryce and Eileen Atkins), and their two daughters, Anne and Elise (Amanda Drew and Anna Madeley). It becomes clear that André is struggling to make sense of certain situations and, in particular, the whereabouts of his wife, and whether his home is up for sale. As the play evolves, we, as the audience, become less and less clear ourselves. Is Madeleine alive or dead, or just in the vegetable patch? Is it André who has died? Are the daughters trying to move André to an old people's home and sell the family house, or is this only in André's mind? Who are the flowers and sympathy note for? Is the “stranger” who appears in the kitchen a figment of André's imagination or a real character from his past? Whilst we gradually become attached to the characters and interested in their story, the protagonists' different perspectives of the situation are played out.