The Dawn of Reckoning – White Bear Theatre, London

A chance reunion is not as accidental as it seems in The Dawn of Reckoning, a quietly unsettling two-hander that lets its secrets surface slowly over the course of a long night.

The Dawn of Reckoning

Director Matthew Parker is a dab hand at two-handers (see Trestle at the Jack Studio Theatre, which also featured Jilly Bond), so I went into The Dawn of Reckoning with fairly high hopes. The premise is an intriguing one: a late-night reunion between former university friends that appears to have happened by chance. Unless, of course, there is more to it than meets the eye. I’m going to avoid spoilers here, because Mark Bastin’s writing unfolds rather neatly. But suffice it to say, there is indeed more going on beneath the surface.

The women in question are Ruth (Bond) and Helena (Bryonie Pritchard), once close friends but now estranged for over twenty-five years. Their meeting takes place in a hotel lounge in Bayswater, a location that turns out not to be neutral ground. Both women had previously stayed there with Tony, a man they were, at different times, married to. Which perhaps explains why the reunion is not entirely straightforward…

What follows is a long, uneasy conversation as the two circle each other, navigating memory, resentment and curiosity. The initial frostiness gradually softens as reminiscences take hold, and they begin to catch up on the decades they have spent apart. It’s a structure that allows Bastin to layer revelations carefully, with the most significant disclosures, as is so often the case, held back until the final stretch (even if one or two of those moments feel slightly more signposted than the rest).

A Touch of Edgar Allen Poe

The sense that there is “more than meets the eye” is reinforced by a subtle shift in tone as the play progresses. There is something faintly Gothic about it from the outset, which I rather liked: a sense of unease beneath the surface civility. At times it’s almost reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe in its psychological intensity. It’s a close, enclosed world, where the past presses in uncomfortably on the present.

Parker’s direction makes strong use of the compact space at the White Bear Theatre, creating a careful ebb and flow between confrontation and retreat that helps offset the inherent claustrophobia of the setting. The design by Hannah Williams is particularly effective. I’ve seen their work before at the Hope Theatre, and they have a real knack for building believable worlds. Here, the hotel lounge feels entirely convincing, while also serving as a space in which decades of shared history can unfold.

Lighting by Abbie Sage subtly shifts the mood between scenes, occasionally jolting the audience out of any sense of complacency. At the centre of it all are two strong performances. Bond and Pritchard capture the uneasy dynamic between the former friends very well, slipping between familiarity and distance as old habits resurface and old wounds reopen. It’s also simply refreshing to see a play offering two such substantial female characters in their sixties.

Overall, I very much enjoyed the evening. The Dawn of Reckoning left me reflecting on my own friendships, on the passage of time, and on the danger of letting the past overwhelm you. Not bad going for a brisk seventy minutes of new writing.

Salterton Arts Review’s rating: 4/5

The Dawn of Reckoning on until 28 March 2026. More info and tickets here.