Grief does not come with an instruction manual. Naomi Denny’s tender three-hander navigates the rocky aftermath of death, in the tricky period where you don’t know what you’re meant to feel, and no one around you knows what to say. Handled with care by director Lucy Jane Atkinson, All the Happy Things is a quiet, sweet and simply told story of two sisters, one learning how to keep going without the other.
Playwright Denny also leads the narrative as Sienna, a high achiever who would disapprove of being described primarily in relation to her dead sister, Emily (LJ Johnson, playful and loose-limbed), though the two are inseparable in this story. A year on from Emily’s accident, Sienna is still seeing her everywhere. So all-consuming is her goofy, sometimes grumpy sister’s presence that Emily repeatedly speaks over others and distracts Sienna, Ghosts-style, from her job and relationship.
