All Of It 
Royal Court, London 
 

ALL acting assignments, to a greater or lesser extent, involve admirable feats of memory and immersion. But Kate O’Flynn’s performances in the three parts of All Of It take those attributes to another level.  
 
In a breathtaking, mesmerising demonstration of recall and concentration, O’Flynn delivers the fiendishly complicated stream of consciousness within Alistair McDowell’s poems without the slightest sign of hesitation or aberration.  
 
One might say that is the job of an actor, but in this case there’s so much to remember, so many diversionary twists and turns in the verse, that it’s astounding she can even get to the end, let alone emerge triumphant. 
 
McDowell’s three superb monologue poems were each written specifically for O’Flynn, and it’s hard to conceive that he could have chosen a better medium for his words. 
 
In Northleigh, 1940, a lonely single woman comes to a previously illusive accommodation with her widowed father during a second world war air raid, while in the Kafkaesque In Stereo, another lone female is somehow subsumed into a damp patch on the wall of her bedroom, undergoing a transformation that allows her to dispassionately witness the passage of eons of time. 
 
In the third, which gives the whole show its title, there’s another machine-gun rattle through the ages, this time from the first babbling thoughts of an infant through to the last jumbled narrative of the same individual on her death bed.  
 
In each monologue O’Flynn harnesses her prodigious storytelling talent to portray three different women in three different circumstances, each listening to their inner voices, each never quite sure whether they’re in control of their lives.  
 
The first two, which share a deliberately drab, interior domestic set by Merle Hensel, are startlingly inventive and spookily omniscient, with an other-worldly atmosphere rooted in dissociation and lurking madness.  
 
All Of It, delivered from a bar stool against a plain black background, is more humorously down-to-earth and recognisably human, so much so that it can be imagined not just as a stage performance but as a riveting piece of TV, radio or film.  
 
If it makes that transition, however, it must be O’Flynn who performs it. She has nailed all three pieces with such distinction that she deserves to make them her own. 
 
Runs until June 17, Box Office: 020 7565 5000, royalcourttheatre.com