Hywel John's first play is fascinating – a nightmarish tale of a pair of orphaned twins and the naïve young godmother who comes to look after them. It's not just the lonely woodland setting that made me think of the Brothers Grimm, the heady atmosphere and odd behaviour are a constant reminder of an askew Hansel and Gretel.
Kate Wasserberg's fine, nuanced production faced its own nightmare. Just as it was due to open the actress playing the godmother experienced a death in her own family and decided she could not continue in the play. Considering the post-funeral setting and the heady emotional atmosphere that was a totally understandable decision but it did leave a problem.
This is a play with only three characters and they are finely balanced so there is nowhere for any of them to hide, they are all at the centre of the audience's attention. Then, thanks to some cancelled previews, with only a weekend to learn and rehearse, not just the part but the way the three voices interweave, Jennifer Kidd stepped into the role.
Because of the shape of my week I saw the play at the second of the re-scheduled previews and she was still performing script in hand. Except that she barely seemed to need it and I very soon forgot it was there just as I soon forgot I was looking at an actress who had stepped into the breach. By the end of the play, when her character is in quiet panic mode, the script had vanished and she was fully into her character in what is a long and complex scene indeed.
The other two participants in this blackly comic triangular dance are the children. They are played, as required by the script, by adults. Steven Meo and Louise Collins are extraordinarily good, with the emphasis on the extraordinary. They move as one, they switch unnervingly between childishness and precocious semi-adulthood, they convey oddness at every moment and they ooze danger from the start.
I can't say that the play contains great surprises, there's little doubt where it is going to end, but nor does that make it in any way unsatisfactory. There's always an air of uncertainty even when you're sure you have at least some idea of what's about to happen.
Mark Bailey's design, like a Magritte painting, is full of things that are realistic in themselves yet by juxtaposition achieve an air of otherness. Kate Wasserberg's direction ensures that the chamber music like exchanges of Hywel John's script constantly surprise, disturb or delight the ear.
This is a play that is often funny, often creepy and in the macabre party at the end is seriously edgy. It was not long into watching it that I forgot its backstage dramas and became wholly caught up in the on-stage drama of a good play given a very fine production indeed.
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