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The Guardian
02-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
The week in theatre: Otherland; Backstroke
That crucial instruction to writers that they should 'show not tell', is even more evidently useful on the stage than on the page. It might be reworded as 'embody not explain'. After all, so much can be seen not only as it is but also in the process of becoming different. This makes Ann Yee's production of Otherland an extraordinary 3D testimony, a valuable gathering of information and a finally unsatisfactory drama. Chris Bush, author of Standing at the Sky's Edge, one of Sheffield Theatres's biggest musical hits, has, without writing an autobiography, drawn on her experiences as a trans woman to produce a twofold story that examines the particular question of what people think it is to be a woman, and considers what is it to become other than your accustomed self. Harry, christened Henry, marries Jo, an adored college girlfriend, before realising that a real life demands becoming a woman, a discovery that leads to the end of the marriage. Living as Harriet, before transitioning, she is greeted with wounding bewilderment from her mother (couldn't the person she thinks of her son stop distracting people's attention?) and with sniggers and insults – 'What is that? – from strangers. Fizz Sinclair's Harry is tender, graceful and touching. Meanwhile her former wife – Jade Anouka at full sizzle – falls for another woman (a beguiling Amanda Wilkin) and agrees, against all her former wishes, to have a baby. In doing so she becomes for a time a stranger to herself and her new wife. There is plenty of insight in Otherland, including the observation that foetuses are routinely given the dimensions of middle-class food: they may be compared to an olive but never to a turkey twizzler. Yet Bush too heavily underlines her significant points. Halfway through, the play's naturalism is briefly abandoned. Fly Davis's design splits open to reveal a murky pool containing an early mermaid version of Harry, caught in the net of men who classify her as a monster. Meanwhile, Jo, entering the world of maternity care, is reimagined as a robotic baby-machine. Throughout, an onstage chorus is put to just the use it shouldn't be, unless describing something undetectable. It tells the audience what to see: 'Harry's shoulders stoop as she turns in on herself.' Fizz Sinclair does not need the commentary – she is particularly powerful when suggesting suppressed pain and quiet withdrawal, which makes her final happiness the more buoyant. Anna Mackmin's new play, Backstroke, starring Tamsin Greig and Celia Imrie – who are two good reasons to see anything – moves through eddies of wordspin and whirlpools of interest. In tracing the coming and going, guttering and flaring relationship between a middle-aged woman and her dying mother, the play, directed by Mackmin herself, comes in myopically close to each scene. The dialogue is sharp but the action gets jammed. Ab Fab long ago dealt the death blow to the idea that daughters of the late 20th century were going to follow tradition and be more rebellious than their staid mothers. This daughter, Bo, played by Tamsin Greig, is not as censorious as earnest Saffy, but she is furrowed. Well, she must have had a hard time at school: Bo is short for Boudicca. Greig, straight-faced but with windmill hands, is made up just right by designer Lez Brotherston in unyielding denims and a bobbly capacious jumper that her mother deems 'lesbian'. She deploys her singular calm as an actor to appear both intent and distracted – pulled between her own troubled adopted daughter and her ailing mother; tugged by exasperation, affection, admiration and desperation. Seen at first inert in a hospital bed, stilled by a stroke, Imrie springs into full embarrassing life as she relives her days with her daughter: dependent, neglectful, occasionally affectionate. With flowing grey hair (shorthand for drifting wits), a fringed shawl and ankle-length dress, she talks about her 'dillypot' in magnificent, mad and maddening detail, informing her shuddering daughter that 'whenever your daddy went down on me' she had a fantasy about a hare. As she prepares for a few days away she dimples while announcing she is packing only one tiny travelling loom. Lucy Briers puts in a neat cameo as a sour-faced ultra-Christian nurse who dispenses aggression as if it were an act of grace, sweet-talking her patient as she feeds her the cherry yoghurt she hates. She is completely credible. As is the flickering emotion between the two stars – their very lack of consistency is authentic. Though it is clear from the beginning how this is going to end, shifts of feeling and slow disclosure of shared secrets make the evening twist unpredictably. The trouble is that when every small thing becomes an event, propulsion is overwhelmed. Backstroke? More like trying to do laps in a Jacuzzi. Star ratings (out of five)Otherland ★★★Backstroke ★★★ Otherland is at the Almeida theatre, London N1, until 15 March Backstroke is at the Donmar Warehouse, London WC2, until 12 April
Telegraph
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Otherland: A deeply moving examination of womanhood
The thorny question at the heart of Otherland, Chris Bush's new play at the Almeida, is 'who'd be a woman?' The play doesn't try to offer pat answers to a question of such magnitude. One of its two main protagonists happens to be a transgender woman and, although the audience gains insights into the challenges this entails, gender reassignment isn't its overarching thrust. What Otherland does offer is a thoughtful and ultimately moving examination of womanhood and its implications – personal, familial, romantic and societal – in a world lacking gender parity and full of stereotypical expectations. This is a play that is interested in the choices and restrictions that women face and what is sacrificed in the name of love and self-determination. Bush, whose previous works include the Olivier-winning Standing at the Sky's Edge and Tony! The Blair Musical, is a transgender woman herself and is adamant about not wanting to be the poster child for transgender theatre. She achieves this by cleverly framing womanhood around the needs and desires of two very different characters. When the play begins, Jo, a cisgender woman is getting married to Harry (then Henry) who, unbeknown to Jo, is unhappy with the body they were born in and wants to live as a woman. Eventually, Harry levels with Jo and initially, it seems their relationship will survive this seismic emotional reordering. But five years later, the marriage has broken down. The rupture sends both of them on very distinct paths of self-discovery. Jo has to contend with her aversion towards having children when she meets new love Gabby who is desperate to be a mother. Harry has to negotiate her family reducing her transition to 'a distraction', tolerate the asinine things people say about her decision and learn, like many women have to, how to safely fend off the unsolicited attention of creepy men. Veering between narration and enactment on Fly Davis' sparely designed stage – where a simple rearrangements of chairs denote the tiers of Machu Picchu, a doctor's surgery or the prow of a ship – Otherland is remarkably compressed storytelling, squeezing great swathes of time into mere minutes. It's never disorientating because composer Jennifer Whyte's live band punctuates the timeline succinctly. In fact, the music works multiple duties here by heightening emotions, moving the story forward, containing the poetry and counterpointing the beautiful singing in close harmonies by the eight-strong female cast. Just before the interval, there is a choreographed moment that illustrates director Ann Yee's clarity of vision, where Jo and Harry's journeys elide metaphorically over their very different concerns about hormones. In the second half, the production leans into the poetic tendencies of Bush's language in surreal scenes that clearly pay homage to Guillermo Del Toro's The Shape of Water. My one small gripe is that the play is a little long, but that can be forgiven because this close study of the many complexities in the wide variety of female lives and identities serves as an affecting plea for connection and understanding.
