Since the premiere of this tightly wound drama of domestic noir in 2012, Nancy Harris has gone on to win acclaim for the television series, The Dry. Her sharp observations and crackling dialogue were evident in her earlier playwriting, too and, in director Rhiann Jeffery’s taut new production, feel fresh and current.
Striking a note of distress in the opening moments as a small boy raises a knife, tension escalates from there. The unannounced arrival of an Irish nanny to their elegant London home is the catalyst for exposing trouble in the marriage of pregnant ex-lawyer Hazel (Lisa Dwyer Hogg) and her globe-trotting husband Richard (Mark Huberman), a cosmetic surgeon. What ensues is so tense that the audience was audibly inhaling, as the child, Daniel (Milo Payne; alternating with Canice Doran) is drawn into the couple’s power games. The initially unflappable nanny, Annie (Jeanne Nicole Ní Áinle), finds herself adjudicating between them all.
