'Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew' review — grief, gender identity and gardening combine in this heartfelt new play

Read our review of Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew, starring Omari Douglas, now in performances at the Bush Theatre to 22 March.

There’s plenty of heart to Coral Wylie’s debut play, in which the non-binary author also takes the central role of a non-binary 19-year-old called Pip.

What’s needed is rather more art to sustain a baggy narrative merging past and present and resulting in a scenic coup that would seem to deliver the entire contents of a west London nursery within the confines of the Bush. The watering chores must be one of the backstage crew’s many delights, and not every production boasts a botanical designer – in this case Dan Yeo, who has clearly pulled out all the verdant stops.

The play shows promise, to be fair: Wylie writes well for actors (in this case a cast of four) as you might expect from a product of the Soho Theatre Writer’s Lab who has saved a plum role for themselves. And you feel at every turn the direct connection between the playwright and their terrain, which addresses head-on themes of grief and loss that left many around me moist-eyed.

I confess to not being as touched as I might have been (and often am at this address) had the writing perhaps not tried quite so hard. Moving from the spectre of a character, Duncan (Omari Douglas), who died in his prime some decades before to the attempts of Pip in the here and now to make sense of Duncan’s importance to their family, the play suggests the ways in which the dead continue to walk amongst us.

Diaries are key in assisting an elision in understanding between past and present, and I was more than once put in mind, rather unexpectedly, of The Importance of Being Earnest, which uses similarly uses literary discovery to propel its denouement.

Journals here turn out to be a shared repository for experience, as references ricochet from Janelle Monáe and the boutique Soho club, The Box, to the matter of gender fluidity in flowers – itself applicable, we discover, to the personages on view. (Along the way, we glean advice as to the best time to plant tomatoes.)

Gender identity fuels a rather strained second act that finds Pip’s mum, Lorin (Pooky Quesnel), having to account for her private life in ways she probably never expected. Pip’s dad Craig, who back in the day was Duncan’s great friend, faces a reckoning of his own, and Wil Johnson expertly navigates the necessary shifts from tenderness to rage and back again. Sexuality under siege provides a common thread, and you feel a firsthand acquaintanceship with that very topic.

Duncan, we’re told, skied “like a baby giraffe” (a lovely image), and Douglas, a 2022 Olivier nominee for the comparably grief-inflected Constellations, burns with passion in his portrayal of a shining light snuffed out too soon.

But there’s no escaping the fact that much of his role feels overwritten, and sentimentalised, and one wonders whether Debbie Hannan’s notably slack production might have been tightened had the playwright not been occupied elsewhere – namely, centre stage.

The intention at every turn is laudable as events reach an emotional catharsis, but there’s a leaner, richer narrative seeding beneath the surface that, unlike the greenery bursting forth at the visually exciting close, has yet to come to full bloom.

Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew is at the Bush Theatre to 22 March. Book Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

Photo credit: Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew (Photos by Helen Murray)