The preoccupation with death is there from the start. A heaviness hangs over Alex Eales’s neat domestic set, a ragged crater blown out of the back wall. Behind is revealed the rocky bank of the Belmont river, where half of Portia Coughlan’s mind and soul lie at all times, her body aching since the death of her twin brother 15 years before.
Carrie Cracknell’s production of Marina Carr’s 1996 Irish drama is beautifully bleak, rich with secrets and mourning. Alison Oliver as Portia, the show’s centrifugal force, is frantic and numb, her ghosts seeming to scratch at her throat, desperate to get out or bring her down with them. As the world turns around Portia on her 30th birthday, she is stuck in thoughts of her lost twin and the memory of his voice. Archee Aitch Wylie emerges in the gloom to sing to her, the water-soaked ghost of the child. Wylie’s lapping voice is exquisite, with Maimuna Memon’s songs digging into Portia’s reality and loosening her grip on the world.
