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 Once again I rocked up not knowing either the play or any other work by the author – you wouldn't believe that I spend so much time hanging around theatres. I learned, though, from a bit of contextual pre-reading that it was a longish play and also that "In its profusion of ideas, Kirkwood's play sometimes makes one's head spin" – thank you Michael Billington. So I knew I'd have to concentrate. I wasn't wrong about that, but the performance fizzed along so engagingly that concentrating was easy.
 The family story, which is wrapped around with the head-spinning profusion of ideas, is beautifully told. The two central performances by Rachel Bothamley and Emily Carmichael – playing sisters Alice and Jenny were stellar. I completely believed they were sisters, with a whole history of rivalry culminating in diametrically opposite lives and world views. Then you meet their mother (a towering performance from Amanda Waggott) and get a greater understanding of how they became the people they are. The moments of intimacy between the sisters and the frustration of their aging mother were among the best moments in the play. It's rare to see such a well-crafted family dynamic – with writing, directing and acting coming together to create a captivating whole.
 Luke (Andrew Mortimer) - as Alice's teenage son - was well characterized as intense and overwhelmingly self-centered. I found him hard to hear at times, though; his articulation could have been better. Bella Hornby was a delight to watch as Natalie his school "friend". Her portrayal of being seventeen and simultaneously over-confident and insecure were spot on.
A lot of the science was supplied by The Boson – a part well played by Luke Owen. It's an interesting role in which he appears as both a scientist/lecturer and also as Luke's father – Alice's estranged partner, who apparently had some kind of crisis and left his family. As The Boson he never interacts with the other characters and yet his presence somehow brings a cohesiveness to the action. His complex speeches were delivered with great liveliness and nuance.
 James Johnston as Henri (Alice's boyfriend) was excellent in this understated role. It's clear that – in this play at least – Lucy Kirkwood has expended all her energies on the women, who really drive the action here. I thoroughly enjoyed their complex well-rounded believable characters and interaction, and the subtle implication that the chaps are needy, whiny and unable to cope. Nice work, Lucy.
Octavia Sheepshanks and Gavriella Bastianelli managed some neat doubling up to play other characters in the ensemble scenes – which helped to keep the pace up nicely, contrasting with the more intimate pieces of family drama.
 The in-the-round setting with the floor-painted particle (at least I assume that's what it was) worked well – creating an excellent focus point for the drama. There was some truly gorgeous lighting by Andy Peregrine, and Bill Burns' unsettling (at times) soundtrack underlined the atmosphere of chaos and lack of control in the lives of the characters. I particularly liked the buzzing mosquitoes – a grating sound that created an atmosphere of almost unbearable tension. The scene changes were done by the cast (always a good thing), but I felt they could have been practiced a bit more – occasionally they interrupted the action more than was necessary.
 I haven't even scratched the surface when it comes to the huge themes that the play covers so succinctly. Kirkwood – really packs it in. At one end of the spectrum, the everyday human stories of family dynamics, thwarted ambition, loss, grief, mental illness, physical decay, bullying... I could go on for longer than the play and still feel as though I hadn't covered it all. Then there's the science discussions. So. Much. Science. Medical research, Hadron colliders, the Higgs boson (don't ask me), a Heisenberg joke that only physicists will get (I laughed politely of course, don't want people to think I'm thick). The strongest theme (for me) was of the tension between scientific research and the advancement of human knowledge and the superstition and anxiety that this can trigger. Can the discovery of a new particle cause the world to end? Does the MMR vaccine cause autism? All this and more was woven seamlessly into the very human drama being played out – and the writing is so good that you just go with it and come out with your brain exploding with all the things there are to think about.
 To sum up with a quote from another review that I read (cheeky I know, but at least I'm admitting to stealing it) "This is how theatre thinks. It stirs ideas together, lets them collide, and leaves us to find our own connections and feel our way through. It's always subjective; not a shared experience, but simultaneous one. In a fraying world, it brings us back together." (Variety, July 2017)
I couldn't put it better myself and I thoroughly enjoyed my evening of having to concentrate really hard.
Photography by Robert Piwko
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