'Otherland' review — Chris Bush takes a big swing with her allegorical fever dream exploring the trans experience

Read our review of new drama Otherland, starring Fizz Sinclair and Jade Anouka, now in performances at the Almeida Theatre to 15 March.

Standing at the Sky’s Edge writer Chris Bush has explained that Otherland, her new play about the trans experience, isn’t her “big transgender play”, and, while there are inevitably personal elements, it isn’t autobiographical. As a whole, it is an unwieldy and erratic piece of work but nevertheless big-hearted and watchable, bringing home the point that transgender people are not a threat and aren’t trying to “steal” anything – the way in which they are treated by society and the media is the problem.

We first meet Harry (Fizz Sinclair) and Jo (Jade Anouka) on their wedding day: they’re seen by their friends as the perfect couple. Harry is living as a man, even though he confided to Jo early in their relationship that he always felt he should have been a woman. Five years later, when Harry is ready to start living as a woman, Jo, despite usually preferring women to men, can’t continue with their relationship, feeling “squeezed out” of the story.

In this eclectic production by multidisciplinary theatre artist Ann Yee, best known for her work as a choreographer and movement director, the action takes place on a round wooden stage (designed by Fly Davies) framed by a ring of lights (by Anna Watson). Some of the fluidity, however, is undone by overly broad performances, and the musical interludes by Jennifer Whyte that reference sea shanties are pleasant enough but underdeveloped.

Jo is an oversharer who impulsively asserts her independence, getting a bad tattoo of a plug socket and travelling to Peru. Biologist Harry, played with quiet dignity by Sinclair, is more reserved, agreeing to use the chemistry department’s revamped gender-neutral toilets in another part of the building where she works so as not to make anyone feel uncomfortable. Everyday life doesn’t grind to a halt because you’re transitioning; there are still grant proposals to be written and conferences to attend.

Bush gives space to things that would come as a surprise to someone who hasn’t grown up female (what if you embark on the Inca trek and then get your period on the first day?). Appearances are everything: trans women are more likely to be approved for hormone treatment if they go to the appointments wearing a dress and nail varnish, as if to show that they’ve put in the effort.

Harry’s expat mother (Jackie Clune), while outwardly supportive, doesn’t understand why she can’t travel to a family wedding on her current (male) passport and is concerned about her taking up too much attention. The four chorus members represent friends, colleagues, medical professionals, and hostile members of the public, and Serena Manteghi is particularly good at being clipped and officious – in the most well-meaning way, of course.

Then there’s the wild Act Two gear switch, in which the stylised realism gives way to full-on allegorical fever dream with echoes of Frankenstein, The Little Mermaid, and The Handmaid’s Tale. Harry is pulled from the sea and treated as a “fish woman” specimen by Enlightenment-era scientists. She escapes and is confronted by a gang of torch-wielding, fish-woman-excluding radical feminists who have built up the land through their own blood, sweat and tears – why does she want to join them when she has the whole ocean to live in?

The most troubling element is the way in which Jo, who has never wanted children, offers to become pregnant because her forceful new partner Gabby (Amanda Wilkin), who is unable to conceive, is desperate for a child and would resent her if they didn’t have one. In the second act, she is a baby-carrying robot in a coercive relationship, but the epilogue seems to suggest that babies make everything okay, more or less – a pretty regressive message considering everything that’s come before.

Otherland is at the Almeida Theatre to 15 March.

Photo credit: Otherland (Photos by Marc Brenner)