It’s the middle of the night and Murph has called her sister Jos for a chat. On her mind are the relative qualities of Julie Andrews and Emily Blunt, both cast as Mary Poppins 50 years apart. Where one brought purity, she argues, the other is complex. And that, in the dark, depressive early hours, seems quite wrong.
This schism between the perfect and the damaged is at the heart of Uther Dean’s two-hander about sisterhood and suicide. Gripped by the doll’s house that sits at the front of Jenny Booth’s set, Murph and Jos have grown up with an impossible ideal. Neither can live up to the childhood image of perfection, just as neither can get the measure of how much injury and inspiration they inflict on each other.
