Two sisters circle each other in the antechamber of an evangelical church, one of them trying to figure out why the other has just assaulted an elderly woman whom the first was baptising in the Irish sea. From the off, it’s clear that there is history here with both a big and a little H. There is also a woolly lamb which, this being allegory, is bound to take some punishment before the day is done.
The play’s title is the Hebrew word for the binding of Isaac by Abraham in the Old Testament as he prepares to sacrifice his son. Its significance isn’t obvious in this story of two daughters of the Northern Irish Troubles, except that both are in their different ways in thrall to The Man. Gill, the older sister, is loyal to the memory of their brutal paramilitary father, while Kelly is handmaiden to a charismatic preacher, whose controlling presence pings on to her phone every other minute.
