As a literary luminary slowly sinking into senility, thrashing through his failing memory like a man battling the suffocating grip of quicksand, Jonathan Pryce gives a performance of remarkable compassion, acuity and devastating power in “The Height of the Storm,” a muted but moving play by the French playwright Florian Zeller being presented by Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.
Even during the few scenes when he is not onstage, Pryce’s brooding presence seems to darken the air with a sense of embattled confusion and barely contained frustration. It’s a performance of impressive focus, given that his character, André, is, intellectually speaking, absent for long stretches of the play, adrift in the world of his own mind, teased by unhappy memory, frustrated by his inability to fix just who and where he is in time. “I’m here!” he querulously insists at one point, belying the terrifying thought that, in some sense, he is not.
