Cuckoo is a delicately arranged play that basks in inaction. We watch the gentle flow of life from inside the front room of a multi-generational Merseyside family of women as they chat, laugh and row. Even when sulky teenager Megyn (Emma Harrison) goes upstairs and inexplicably locks herself in the bedroom of grandmother Doreen (Sue Jenkins), only then talking through her smartphone, nothing really happens.
Produced in partnership with Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, the play is driven by springy dialogue. Michael Wynne, who launched his career at the Royal Court with The Knocky in 1994, typically writes in a comic register and Cuckoo’s humour – sometimes ebullient, other times mordant – fires the drama. There are times, though, when the play, directed by Vicky Featherstone, wavers and is in danger of coming to a standstill.
