Review: Orphans, Traverse Theatre

Written for Culture Wars

Helen and Danny have just sat down to a celebratory dinner and in walks Liam, his T-shirt sodden with blood, his eyes wild and white. The three just stare at one another. Nothing’s said, nobody moves. Wine glasses remain unchinked, frozen mid-toast. It’s as volatile an opening as you’ll ever see.

Jittery with shock, Liam has just witnessed a young man viciously attacked by a knifeman, slashed all over rather than stabbed. He cradled the victim in his lap until, suddenly, the man leapt up and legged it; bleeding and running, running and bleeding. As the evening wears on, however, it becomes apparent that the inconsistencies Liam lets slip may not be the result of memory blanks after all.

Onto this wiry but tautly-strung frame, Dennis Kelly pegs a wealth of ideas, primarily concerning familiarity, gated communities and the fear of outsiders. He asks how much loyalty we owe to family and why a culture of tremulous distrust perpetuates.

More than this, though, Kelly’s writing thumps like a heart straining to contain itself, pulsing at three-times its resting rate. His ability to underpin even the most mundane of topics, instructions for steaming rice, for example, with a lurking menace is incredible, as is his talent for diving right into a character’s illogical argument. In fact, Kelly’s dialogue gives a star-turn here, as sentences dissipate and contort, mere nothings reveal deep truths and ill-chosen words slip out and spark raw dispute.

However, there is a sense that his dexterity for dialogue conceals the slenderness of the plot portrayed. The play’s thrust is the stilted emergence of a truthful version of an event past and, although Kelly maxes out the tension throughout, Orphans is never more than a tightly knit and impeccably crafted playlet.

At times, perhaps, Jonathan McGuiness and Claire-Louise Cordwell as the married couple mishandle the text, spelling it out with a slight, but perilous, staginess. By contrast, Joe Armstrong prattles through it with perfect ease, words tumbling scattergun off his tongue.

With Garance Marneur’s set of silhouetted spikes looming over the family home, Roxanna Silbert’s production gains a vaguely dystopian edge, while remaining firmly lodged in the present. In is this balance of the warped and the recognisable lays the daunting, haunting power of Orphans.