Extra!_Extra!_Theatrel_Review_M_Doland_My_sister_in_This_House_Greenwich_Playhouse

Inside Arts Productions presents

My Sister in this House

by Wendy Kesselman

Directed by Illona Linthwaite

Greenwich Playhouse

15 January – 3 February, 2008

This intimate upstairs room of the Saint Christopher's Inn is the perfect setting for Kesselman's dark piece. The eerie, empty atmosphere that defines the play is set as you enter the small theatre and take your seat a breath away from the sparse, functional set. If you enjoy your theatre cerebral and lo-fi then a night in Greenwich should be on your cards.

The play focuses on the tensions between two sisters who work as maids for a highly thought of society lady and her daughter. As the play progresses the two maids become more independent; first from their overbearing unseen mother, and later on from their mistress. Similarly the daughter Isabelle develops in parallel, becoming more like her lonely mother, imitating her desires and mannerisms. The two ladies cannot bear the growing insolence of their charges and it is from here the drama comes.

Indeed the play can be thought very much as a treatise on power and the class sytem: the maids in turn under the pressure of their mother, of the nuns who taught them and of their employers. The daughter and her mother vying for power, feeding of each other's failings. If the script has a flaw, it is only that it creates questions that it hints will be resolved but never are: the history of the maids at the nunnery, the inability of Isabelle to marry. Many tantalising facts are hinted at, but left under wraps for the audience to invent explanations for

The four performers are all recent graduates of Drama Studio London, and as might be expected from such young actors their performances are not perfect. The childish voice Toyen Do uses for Lea, presumably intended to mark her out as innocent and naïve, merely grates after prolonged exposure. The fact that she does not tone it down as the character develops only heightens the frustration. All four of the young women start the play unsure, exaggerating their gestures in a manner that would be essential in large theatres, but here feels awkward and detracts from the intimacy of the setting. As the play develops, however,

and the emotional tension charges up, they gradually find their feet and each rallies to give the climax its proper weight, Romilly Turner's Madame Danzard is the most well realised of the quartet, at times comical and others deeply severe, giving her character a complexity that the others sometimes lack.

The direction, from local Illona Linthwaite, is effective and minimalist, and at greatest impact during the silent scenes between mistresses and maids. Some peculiar conventions are established, such as the way all the characters move around unseen walls, that create an effective jarring sensation that fits with the awkward tensions of the piece.

On the whole the play is solid, and its difficulties in the beginning are forgiven by the triumphal, imminent and dramatic end. The final harrowing scenes played with great subtlety and emotion offer a good payout for the time invested, and afterwards there you find yourself in a charming pub which is the perfect place to discuss the action.