Cordelia Lynn’s dreamlike, folklore-inflected but oddly bourgeois play about a house of women by the sea defies easy interpretation. Is it a study of loss – involving both grief and dementia – or a playful suggestion of how a collective, matriarchal society might work?
Maybe it’s neither. Or both. Maybe I’m like Mark (Tom Mothersdale) who blunders into the house and tries to assert his authority by mansplaining and taking over the cooking. Though the atmosphere and the largely subdued, natural performances in James Macdonald’s production have a lulling, hypnotic effect, this is an aimless, shapeless piece of work. Lynn asks the audience to work too hard, and to accept some fatuous gimmicks along the way.
The setup reads like an aspirational, Sunday-supplement lifestyle feature: academic Shirley (Geraldine Alexander) and her artist partner Sarah (Thusitha Jayasundera) share this light-filled cottage with their three daughters. Life is all brisk shore walks, bracing dips and meals cooked at the tasteful kitchen island, though it’s possible this is just how Shirley’s failing mind wants things to be.
There’s also a suggestion that furiously pregnant George (Pearl Chanda) and child-like Toni (Grace Saif) are voluntary members of the family, perhaps mermaids or selkies. The third daughter, Mark’s partner Robin, has evaporated like sea-spume, though only he seems concerned by this. The group reminisce, argue, and play Charades and Jenga, which may be significant. Or not.
Storms and mood changes roll in like waves, courtesy of the dramatic lighting and sound designs of Jack Knowles and Max Pappenheim. An old sailor tells tales in exchange for gifts, and the wonderful June Watson is brought on as a mysterious, semi-aquatic crone to deliver a poetic discourse of possession and loss, then leaves. She’s a device, not a character.
A few exchanges within scenes are repeated with a sado-masochistic spin, but this feels more like a whim than a coherent narrative idea. What looks like a ley line cuts across the set, but it turns out to be a track along which two mechanical lobsters scuttle for freedom. The night I was there, one of them got stuck.
The idea of a female family unit, arranged as a flawed but relaxed democracy and in league with the elemental power of the ocean, is a potent one. But it feels as if Lynn is constantly plucking ideas out of the air – or rather, the sea – to bulk out the play’s lack of narrative purpose.
A bit more development and dramaturgy might have helped – the sort of things that Hampstead, as a theatre dedicated to new writing, used to be good at. But a series of lacklustre revivals and undercooked premieres post-pandemic, plus the loss of its Arts Council England grant and the resignation of artistic director Roxana Silbert, seems to have robbed this place of its rigour and its mojo. Shame.
