A family of four and a therapist tiptoe around one another in a long, empty room with a two-way mirror at one end. We could be in a hospital or a youth detention centre. Their movement could not feel more agonisingly physical, nor the mirror more exposing. Yet the characters barely move from chairs that are far apart in a space sketched out by designer Naomi Dawson in strip-lighting and scaffolding, which runs through the centre of the audience.
The room is in fact a theatrical mirage, constructed by writer Ruby Thomas from the sort of asymmetrical communication that occurs when something really bad has happened and nobody knows who to blame or what to do about it. In a series of gripping group therapy scenes, we find out about the family breakdown that has brought student Sam to this place, but it’s not until the final stretch that anyone puts a name to what he has done.
