The strength of Joanne Ryan’s two-hander is in its quiet observational detail. It is not a play of momentous events or grand revelations, but a bittersweet portrait of a mother-daughter relationship complicated by mental illness.
In Sarah Jane Scaife’s unfussy production for Dublin’s Fishamble, Ryan eases us almost imperceptibly into a scenario inspired by the relationship with her own mother. A house extension is being built and a woman known simply as Mother (Pom Boyd) has to stay for a few weeks in the studio flat of the grownup Daughter (Karen McCartney). It is an open-ended arrangement subject to the weather and the speed of the building work.
With her love of toast and daytime TV, Mother has a quaint streak of eccentricity. With her Zoom calls and appetite for fancy restaurants, Daughter seems terribly modern in comparison. Living at close quarters as the extension takes longer than planned, they upturn the usual parent-child relationship as Mother follows her whimsical instincts and Daughter stays practical.
The stakes are so low as to be banal, were it not for the light touch of the writing and the seductively well-matched performances. Boyd and McCartney capture the ebb and flow of familial relationships. Their tolerance is tested but they are too loving to be irritated for long.
All this is the groundwork for Mother’s transition from everyday cheeriness to the highs of a bipolar disorder. Boyd handles it brilliantly, rolling out her stream-of-consciousness rambles with an enthusiasm as exhilarating for her as it is infuriating for Daughter. She navigates her subsequent crash into depression with equal force. All the while, McCartney has the resigned air of a put-upon child, empathetic enough to recognise the illness, vulnerable enough to be wounded by it.
As a play, it has no metaphor or big statement to make, but it covers its tough and tender ground with insight and sensitivity.
• At the Traverse, Edinburgh, until 25 August
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