A children’s game of make-believe turns serious for two adult siblings in Ciara Elizabeth Smyth’s disturbing comedy, produced by Belfast’s Prime Cut Productions. Taking an absurdist approach to themes of sexual consent and false memory, it shifts disarmingly from spiky humour to tense confrontation. Incorporating blithely upbeat dance numbers and fantasy sequences, director Oisín Kearney constantly plays with expectations.
When we meet Faye (Charlotte McCurry) she is living alone in a bare room and has been sexually accosted by a masked man (Thomas Finnegan) hiding in her wardrobe. Unable to sleep for weeks and at her wit’s end, she consults a suave doctor (Rory Nolan, in voiceover) who perfunctorily attempts to diagnose the cause of her insomnia.
Deciding that the best therapeutic approach is to stage a re-enactment of the wardrobe attack, Faye enlists the help of her brother Naoise (Finnegan, alternating with Michael Patrick). While initially concerned for her mental wellbeing, Naoise also has problems of his own: he needs Faye to help clear him of an accusation of sexual assault by a colleague.
As Faye suspects his version of what happened, questions arise about the reliability of her own memory and the power dynamics shift. With brother and sister accusing each other of crossing a line, the gaps in their stories become unbridgeable.
In a polished production that was an award-winner at the Dublin fringe festival last year, Denis Clohessy’s pulsing sound design and Ciaran Bagnall’s lighting create an increasingly eerie tone. While structurally showing its origins as a 10-minute piece that has been expanded, with a final scene that seems grafted on, Smyth’s script demands McCurry and Finnegan hover between emotional registers, which they do, grippingly.
Sharply observing the patterns of contemporary arguments about proof, blame and victimhood, Smyth is unafraid of ambiguous, murkily grey terrain. As the wardrobe game plays out, we are not in Narnia now.
• At the Abbey theatre, Dublin, until 29 July. Then at the Traverse theatre, Edinburgh, 3-27 August.
