Dave Fargnoli

<span style="caret-color: rgb(51, 51, 51); color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: NoeTextRegular, Georgia, serif; font-size: 18px;">Cracknell’s in-the-round staging adds some dynamism to the largely static piece, with actors sweeping in from all angles during the tighter, faster second act as events begin to repeat themselves and timelines start to overlap. The circular set by Alex Eales is kept necessarily sparse, but uses a sectioned revolve to gently waltz the actors around as their characters travel through space and time. A pair of elliptical lighting strips hang above, with bright points of light chasing each other around their perimeters like electrons orbiting a nucleus.</span><br>

The production reunites Owen with director Rachel O’Riordan after their harrowing 2022 Iphigenia in Splott, and a similarly queasy sense of gnawing discomfort permeates this piece. Here, themes of generational trauma and the experiences of abuse survivors come to the fore. Owen’s revised, contemporary-language dialogue feels on-the-nose at times. Yet there is an appealing thread of pitch-black humour running through the text. As the story unfolds, Owen constantly shifts blame and judgement, and highlights potentially exonerating contextual details between the characters. Each horrible new revelation is quickly refuted by a sharp counter argument, as Owen unflinchingly examines all sides of every contentious topic.

Foley’s breezy staging captures the absolute absurdity of this exercise in mutually assured destruction, even if the play’s momentum is frequently interrupted by the demands of a story that jumps between a quartet of main characters, all played by Coogan. Foley approaches the challenge of having these characters interact with a variety of techniques, ranging from slickly edited videos to pre-recorded audio clips and some frustratingly slow costume changes obfuscated by illusion designer Chris Fisher’s seamless misdirection.

Warchus sets a stiff, strained tone, leaning hard into the play’s comic potential, but smoothing off the sharp edges of its social commentary. Here, the piece becomes a kind of anti-farce, full of lurching contrivances and characters bursting in through doors and windows, their sudden arrivals marking hairpin tonal swerves. While there are some hilarious set pieces and some compelling moments of pathos, the production never recovers from its uneven energy and slack pace.

On press night, the text was interpreted by Nick Mohammed – perhaps best known under his uproariously funny, utterly obnoxious comic alter ego Mr Swallow. Though that character is overbearing and egotistical, here Mohammed displays striking generosity, dropping in just a few judicious comic pauses and nervous, sidelong looks to heighten the humour without ever disrespecting the play’s conceit or drawing focus from Soleimanpour’s text.

Following the fortunes of families living in Sheffield’s iconic Park Hill estate, Robert Hastie’s busy production presents a kaleidoscope of poignant moments from across the decades – New Year’s Eve parties and election nights, celebrations and street fights. Bush’s characters are instantly recognisable, but their triumphs and tragedies are reduced to brief, emotionally resonant vignettes in Hastie’s headlong, breathless staging.

The production has a strikingly cinematic aesthetic that seamlessly integrates video projections, live action and superbly achieved stage illusions. Groundbreaking work from visual effects designers Jamie Harrison, Chris Fisher and 59 Productions breathe life into the play’s unnatural world: otherworldly monsters pop up out of dark corners; wisps of animated smoke spiral into spectral shapes; flailing bodies are lifted into the air, tossed around and crushed by invisible forces.

Jeremy Herrin’s production, starring Woody Harrelson and Andy Serkis, is staged as full-on farce. Herrin gives his big-name cast free rein to milk the text for every possible laugh, and chucks in a flurry of sight gags for good measure. It is often quite funny, but the relentless clowning interrupts the play’s rhythm, diffusing the tension and menace that should be building in the background. Rather than drawing a clear connecting line from the grubby locker-room talk of the play’s first few minutes to the brutal violence of its closing moments, Herrin instead leaves us with a series of amusing but disjointed punchlines.

Skinner’s sharply observed writing is full of humour, wit and fragments of poetry. Director Ian Rickson never rushes the sprawling, stately scenes, allowing plenty of time for the endearingly flawed characters to grow on us, and for doubts to fester – doubt over the truthfulness of Elaine’s version of events, and over the motivations behind Kate’s ardent support of the project.

Approaching the text with uncompromising clarity, director Fish intentionally excises much of the lightness from the show, excavating unspoken themes of sexual violence and criminal complicity along the way. Here, the unsettling number Pore Jud is Daid becomes a coercive act of emotional abuse. The closing wedding sequence has distinct echoes of Tarantino with its blood-splattered bridal party and deadpan dialogue.

You might hope for more bite in a comedy about a potential poisoner inveigling her way into a suburban family: the tone here is thoroughly tame. There is some mildly embarrassing toilet humour and gentle sending up of the stereotypical foibles of gauche Americans and stuffy Brits. Still, the script is undeniably funny. Packed with pithy one-liners, the show gains momentum after a slow start, ratcheting up the cringe factor with every new revelation.