Owen reckons with death in trilogy's emotional closer

In the faltering 'End', dramatist David Eldridge explores how we choose to die and be remembered

- Alice Saville

National Theatre, London

Novelists are all too aware that the secret to commercial success is a multipart series, as thoroughly proven by canny authors from Dickens to Hilary Mantel to The Hunger Games’ Suzanne Collins. But for a playwright, a series looks less like good business sense, more like dangerous optimism. Will audience members really have the time, lasting interest and spare cash to return to the theatre multiple times, often years apart?

Playwright David Eldridge’s Beginning premiered in 2017, followed by Middle in 2022. Now, his trilogy of stories of ordinary Essex life is complete with End, an emotive look at how we choose to die and be remembered. It's a quietly moving play that makes sense on its own — without quite having the narrative heft to clean up as a piece of drama in its own right.

The action has moved to north London, where two Essex transplants are reckoning with death in their bougie kitchen. Clive Owen (