![]() ![]() When he gives his sister a scarf with rainbow stripes, it feels like a queer-culture reference to her outsider status, in a production that is as intelligent as it is adventurous. They are not dysfunctional so much as out of place, which is equally true of Joshua James as a smart, sardonic Tom, a man who loses his job for writing poetry on a shoebox. “Being different” is what characterises the whole family in Banerjee’s vision. ![]() She holds her own in clashes with her mother, even as she matches the description of “being different” accorded to her by Eloka Ivo’s Jim O’Connor in the magnificent, heart-breaking duet that crowns the show. ![]() Likewise, Rhiannon Clements plays Laura without the conventional fragility. Laura is deeply fragile, both emotionally and physically: she is painfully shy, and a childhood illness has left one leg slightly shorter than the other, making her walk with a limp. Geraldine Somerville plays Amanda Wingfield not as some deranged southern belle, but as a caring, if overly attentive, mother her reasoning sound, her manner pleasant. So far so European art house, but Banerjee also upturns assumptions about the characters. Free and fluid, they give physical shape to the play’s emotional tug of war. Working with movement director Anthony Missen, the actors make dynamic use of this space, positioning themselves angsty distances apart and addressing the audience as much as each other. ‘Magnificent duet’ … Eloka Ivo as Jim and Rhiannon Clements as Laura, with Geraldine Somerville (right) as Amanda. ![]()
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