Page 166 - FINAL_Guildhall Media Highlights 2019-2020 Coverage Book

perform outside of the classical canon and established modern classics that drama
schools so often lean on.

Director Kate Budgen’s production begins with the easy simplicity of domestic drama,
but after a crucial revelation that palpably changes the temperature of the first scene it

adopts the pace and tension of a thriller as Maddy’s deteriorating psychological state is
charted. It is a gripping production and while the hysteria builds well, Budgen never pits

the audience against Maddy but uses the play’s quick-fire structure to show how rapidly
thoughts, feelings and behaviours can escalate alarmingly.

As Maddy, Sophie Doyle has the lion’s share of the performance and a far broader
experience of fear, concern and obsession to present. The initial shock and over-reaction

are pointed, while Doyle’s finest moment is the breathless mania of a key confessional
scene in the final third of the play that induced plenty of shocked gasps. There is also a

hardness and obstinacy in Maddy that Doyle finds, refusing to yield to her husband or
mother-in-law, but in the middle sections Doyle might considering varying the severity
of Maddy’s reactions to the numerous strangers she encounters in order to reserve a

little in the tank for later.

Mackenzie Heynes expresses Rory’s more balanced concern really well, remaining
rational and proportionate in the face of his wife’s increasingly extreme behaviour. Bella

Maclean playing Rory’s mother captures the more trusting personality of a different era
and growing in strength as she tries to assume control of the family, while David Buttle

brings a subtle threat to the variety of strange men that Maddy encounters, treading a
fine line between helpful and sinister even as a Police Officer.

In this Milton Court Theatre production, the emphasis is on the maternal instinct to
identify and ward off threats to a child, a gut instinct to protect that quickly sours into

something ultimately more damaging, gives Gut a touch of Bryony Lavery’s Frozen in its
exploration of a mother’s worst fears and even a scene that nods to A Clockwork Orange.

A very good choice of play and a fine production that has much to say about parental
trust, retribution and forgiveness.

Runs until 11 February 2020