Review of the last photo – a talking dog leads a journey from terror to hope | stage

CDo we really learn from history? That’s the question hanging over Catherine Dyson’s The Last Portrait – which was first shared in a rehearsed reading at York Theater Royal as part of the RSC’s 37 Plays initiative in 2023 and is now receiving a full production. It is a piece that constantly moves between past and present, testing the empathic capacities and limits of theater as an art form.

There is a touch of Tim Crouch in Dyson’s writing, which invites the audience into the imaginative act of bringing her words to life. This is a play about images in which not a single image appears. We are addressed in the third person, cast as audience members in the theater as well as ninth-grade students on a school trip to an exhibition about the Holocaust. Describing the unseen photographic evidence of genocide, the play takes us back to the scenes that were captured, and puts us in the position of those who were led to their crimes – as well as the position of the neighbors who looked the other way.

Our guide throughout is the excellent Robin Simpson as Sam, the students’ emotional support dog. Simpson speaks kindly to us throughout the exhibit, radiating a relaxed canine energy, pausing periodically to count the staff and check how we are feeling. John R. Wilkinson’s engaging production thrives on simplicity and space, allowing his storytelling and subtle shifts in lighting and sound to transport our imaginations—as well as leaving gaps that expose shortcomings of imagination and empathy.

Although the play can’t resist ending on a note of hope, there is nothing elegant about The Last Picture’s take on history or humanity. If these images and the responses to them show us anything, it is that we remain capable of it all: selflessness, brutality, compassion, indifference, kindness, and atrocity alike.