A stranger arrives at a seaside town with a single suitcase and a tabula rasa of a backstory. She rents a room with an elderly woman and gradually we discover that she has an estranged child and her wrists have scars. It is clear that Sandra (Nicola Harrison) is not all she seems.
As Tom Ratcliffe’s play progresses, a question mark dangles over Sandra’s identity: is she, in fact, Evelyn, who 10 years ago was convicted of providing a false alibi for her partner – a child killer – and served a jail sentence for her part in the heinous crime? Some suspicious minds in this small coastal town begin to point the finger.
The premise for this story of public demonisation and the impossibility of rehabilitation for women like Evelyn is an excellent one and there is an echo of the Soham murders to her tale, though no direct reference.
Evelyn clearly aims to explore the interface between coercive control, criminality and unforgiving mob justice. The problem is that none of it is executed convincingly enough: the script feels scrappy and the acting in director Madelaine Moore’s production cannot cover the cracks.
The biggest misjudgement is to use a Punch and Judy show to represent a phantasmagoric version of the mob and its commentary. Actors don puppets masks, swing sausages around and speak in “red top” headlines about Evelyn’s possible whereabouts as they bay for blood.
They are accompanied by the baroque sounds of screeching violin, accordion, xylophone and a voice distortion machine (composition and sound design by Michael Crean, who stands beside the stage wearing a balaclava cum gimp-mask). The puppets are not sinister, savage or darkly funny enough to have a visceral effect; they only bring unwanted stops to Sandra’s story and become an annoyingly repeated distraction.
Rula Lenska gives a beguiling performance as Sandra’s eccentric landlady, who is experiencing the onset of dementia, but intimacy between the women is too quickly reached. The storyline around dementia itself struggles for more space to breathe and seems more a function of the plot.
Harrison is not always convincing as Sandra, spending too long in the first half staring beadily into the distance in an effort to look mysterious. The second half brings more interesting tensions between Sandra and a nurse (Yvette Boakye) who is trying to “out” her, and between Sandra and her new partner (Offue Okbegbe). This latter relationship contains so many issues around love, trust and forgiveness that it is the most intriguing element of this play.
But it comes too late and the production ends up seeming like a weak episode of Broadchurch – with Punch and Judy thrown in.
At Southwark Playhouse, London, until 16 July.
