Starry, Starry Evening at the Orange Tree
“No woman is old. That does not mean that there are no old women, but that a woman is not old as long as she loves and is loved.”
Vincent in a letter to his brother Theo from London 31 July 1874
There is a plaque at 87 Hackford Road London SW9 explaining that Vincent van Gogh lodged here from 1873 to 1874. Nicholas Wright’s play is partly based on Vincent’s letters to his brother Theo and others about his time in London, and party on Wright’s own imagination. Aged 20, Van Gogh (Jeroen Frank Kales) lodged with widowed Ursula Loyer (Niamh Cusack) then 49 and her 17 year old very pretty, daughter Eugenie (Ayesha Ostler).
Van Gogh is working in a London gallery selling art, a branch of Goupil and Co and his letters show how interested he is in looking at other people’s painting on view in London. Ursula Loyer is listed in the 1871 Census as a Music Teacher but Wright has her running a small school for boys hoping to get into a grammar school. Also living as a lodger here is a man with artistic ambition Samuel Plowman (Rawaed Asde) whom Vincent teaches how to draw.
The set for this play uses the intimate Orange Tree space as a detailed Victorian kitchen with a central table and chairs, a store cupboard in one corner and a sink area opposite. A hob is used to cook real food and Vincent, offering to help, is given by Ursula the task of peeling potatoes. This is an allusion to his famous painting The Potato Eaters and his numerous still life paintings of unpeeled potatoes.
Nicholas Wright has inserted into his play many references to Van Gogh’s later paintings and what we know about his mental health. He talks about an empty chair and we think of that Yellow Chair study painted in Arles. Ursula Loyer’s husband was French and Vincent finds a book which belonged to him extolling the beautiful women of Arles. He recognises in Ursula a depression which he can relate to. Wearing all black 16 years after her husband’s death she has a serious air of loss.
What makes Georgia Green’s direction of Vincent in Brixton special is not just the intimacy of the set or the assured quality of the writing but the delicate portrait of the young Vincent by the Dutch actor, Jeroen Frank Kales. He is awkward and shy, funny and endearing and bears a remarkable physical resemblance to the red haired Vincent. But of course with both his ears!
The substance of Nicholas Wright’s play has to be part fact, part conjecture. What was it that made Vincent van Gogh into a great painter? Does genius go hand in hand with mental instability? On record are the letters, wonderfully descriptive of nature and plants and trees, that Vincent exchanged with his younger brother Theo, and something mysteriously referred to by Vincent’s parents as the “secrets at the Loyers”.
The secret might have been a romance between the widow and her lodger. Niamh Cusack excels in this role and after they have embraced she casts off the black clothes and wears a dress of sprigged blue. I must commend designer Charlotte Henery not just for her pretty set but the accuracy of women wearing corsets to emphasize their small waists and the wonderful bustle dresses.
There is good humour some of it coming from Vincent’s awkwardness and we really feel Ursula’s despair when Vincent is transferred away. The arrival of his equally dysfunctional sister Anna (Amber van der Brugge) with her obsessive cleaning and comments on the lack of British cleanliness is hilarious except that she also has decided opinions on Vincent’s relationship with his landlady.
I saw this play at the Cottesloe in 2002 and it transferred both to the West End and Broadway. This production is every bit as good as the original with superb performances and even more closeness than the National’s smallest space. This play is sold out for its entire run as the Orange Tree and Tom Littler’s reputation guarantee an audience wanting more. Vincent in Brixton gets five stars from Theatrevibe, the theatre site that doesn’t do stars.
Editor of TheatreVibe.co.uk
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Production Notes
Vincent in Brixton
Written by Nicholas Wright
Directed by Georgia Green
Cast
Starring:
Niamh Cusack
Jeroen Frank Kales
Rawaed Asde
Amber van der Brugge
Ayesha Ostler
Creatives
Director: Georgie Green
Designer: Charlotte Henery
Lighting Designer: Lucía Sánchez Roldán
Composer and Musical Director: Donato Walton
Information
Running Time: Two hours 20 minutes with one interval
Booking to 18th April 2026
but sold out. Look at the website for returns and
extra ideas as to how to get a ticket.
Theatre:
Orange Tree Theatre
Rail/Tube: Richmond
Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge
at the Orange Tree
on 20th March 2026