'The Other Place' review — this clever modern twist on Greek tragedy is a shocking night at the theatre

Read our review of The Other Place, starring Emma D’Arcy, Alison Oliver and Tobias Menzies, now in performances at the National Theatre to 9 November.

It won’t be your lasting memory of this short, shocking play, but let’s take a moment to acknowledge that Alexander Zeldin is a wonderfully unpredictable playwright. Last October, he made his Lyttelton Theatre debut (having staged earlier works at the National’s Dorfman Theatre) with The Confessions: a sweeping story spread across continents and decades, based on his mother’s tumultuous life. Now he’s occupying the same prestigious stage, but with a one-act play loosely inspired by Sophocles' tragedy Antigone.

This, though, is a modern family drama: one that initially appears to be about muddling through as a blended family, and then about struggling with grief. But it eventually evolves into a story that is full on Greek tragedy: one with spilled blood, incest and an off-stage death. “I’m telling you there’s some bad juju in the air,” comments one character. There certainly is.

There’s no dead brother to lay to rest here, but sisters Annie (a haunting Emma D’Arcy) and Issy (as played by Alison Oliver, nervous and keen to keep the peace) – names are largely modernisations of their Ancient Greek counterparts – are mourning their dead father. His ashes have sat in an urn for several years, but the family can’t agree on what to do with them.

Compliant sister Issy is living in the house she grew up in, which her uncle Chris (a volatile Tobias Menzies) has taken over and is in the process of renovating with his wife Erica (a gentle Nina Sosanya), who’s brought her grown-up child Leni (an affable Lee Braithwaite) into the home. Rebellious Annie has been drifting for several years, avoiding her uncle’s messages. Then there’s gobby family friend Terry (Jerry Killick), whose lurking takes a more sinister tone in the dead of night.

It is a play about terrible secrets, taboos and trauma, and not knowing what goes on behind closed doors – or even in the next room. But Zeldin, who also directs, cleverly diverts our attention to focus on the unit’s dynamic as it is in the present: Annie’s arrival bursts the family’s forced politeness and seems to be the catalyst for the controlling Chris’s anger. She’s scapegoated as the problem; a difficult troublemaker.

The tension builds expertly: after an increasingly violent Chris kicks Annie out, the vision of him returning to find her back inside is a grip-your-seat moment straight out of a horror. Later, when an act of incest already has us squirming, its discovery provokes a collective gasp on press night, and surely will in subsequent performances.

Rosanna Vize’s set subtly reflects a family that doesn’t quite fit yet: the new sliding glass doors Chris is so chuffed to have fitted are at odds with the old, scraggly armchair in front of them. But it’s most impressive when coupled with a trick from James Farncombe’s UV lighting that illuminates the previously darkened garden, shining an eerie glow on the tops of the trees and Annie’s tent.

Chris undergoes a three-part personality shift – reasonable patriarch to raging bully to a man weakened by his own misguided sexuality – that, in the space of a day, is not entirely believable.

There’s also not a clear point to this story, except, perhaps, to remind us that difficult people are often the product of difficult pasts. But it’s a play that develops slowly then drops a bombshell; a night at the theatre you won’t forget.

The Other Place is at the National Theatre to 9 November.

Photo credit: The Other Place (Photos by Sarah Lee)