Review: WHAT I’D BE, Jack Studio

The premise of What I’d Be is disarmingly simple: two estranged sisters sit on a bench in a small town, and talk. In one unflinchingly cathartic hour of theatre, they’ve ricocheted from passive aggression to outright resentment, to renewed understanding and finally reconciliation.

It transpires early on that Ally (Beth Birrs), a whimsical would-be writer stuck managing a bookshop in her hometown, and her corporate high-flyer elder sister Makayla (Rachel Jones) have reunited on the occasion of their abusive mother’s funeral. In these two capable young actors’ hands, seconds of awkward silence stretch into hours, and one glance can convey years of painful separation.

The ideas on display here do not reinvent the wheel, but newcomer Tanieth Kerr’s writing is subtly observational and often drily humorous – Makayla at one point slips a major emotional bombshell into a surreal monologue about choking on prawns. Some soapier moments (“she was my mum too!”) are offset by an innate sense of how deep familial estrangement can cut, and how neither party should be left off the hook.

Unfortunately, though, Kerr has written herself into a knot here, with a concept tied so intimately to just two characters: the unseen mother feels like a kind of vaguely defined bogeyman, and as such it takes a while for us to get a sense of what made the sisters’ relationship so fraught. As they begin to thaw their relationship, their long monologues frantically spelling out their thought processes feel less like conversations and more like therapy sessions in which the audience is an unwilling participant.

Intriguing glimpses of Ally and Makayla’s mother forcing her daughters into cult-like social isolation, and of her long-term hospitalisation before her death, are hinted at but never fully explored. Within such a tightly restricted setting (Katy Livsey’s direction could use a little more motion), one would also hope there would be more room for temporal or geographical specificity; instead, this tale is never pinned to anywhere more precise than a town outside London in the 2020s (and we only know this is post-pandemic thanks to a clumsily mentioned Zoom quiz).

That being said, there is much that is promising here. The brief opening scene, drenched in warm lighting and nostalgia, takes us back to Ally and Makayla’s adolescence, just before Makayla heads to university. It’s a tender portrait of what the sisters’ relationship could have been, Makayla’s restlessness rubbing up against Ally’s fear of the unknown. When we revisit them at the funeral seven years later and the play’s pacing issues begin to show, it’s refreshing when we do catch a glimpse of a more authentic dynamic beneath the therapy-speak.

Kerr clearly has strong ideas about what makes families tick – the inside jokes, the tacit judgement, the gaps that feel impossible to bridge – and this makes her an exciting writer to watch. Not every idea she’s had about Ally and Makayla’s dynamic has managed to stick the landing, but at its best, What I’d Be is a poignant fable of what it takes to lose someone, and to have that person brought back to you.

What I'd Be plays at the Jack Studio until 21 February