Since the premiere of this tightly wound drama of domestic noir in 2012, Nancy Harris has gone on to win acclaim for the television series,The Dry. Her sharp observations and crackling dialogue were evident in her earlier playwriting, too and, in director Rhiann Jeffery’s taut new production, feel fresh and current.
Striking a note of distress in the opening moments as a small boy raises a knife, tension escalates from there. The unannounced arrival of an Irish nanny to their elegant London home is the catalyst for exposing trouble in the marriage of pregnant ex-lawyer Hazel (Lisa Dwyer Hogg) and her globe-trotting husband Richard (Mark Huberman), a cosmetic surgeon. What ensues is so tense that the audience was audibly inhaling, as the child, Daniel (Milo Payne; alternating with Canice Doran) is drawn into the couple’s power games. The initially unflappable nanny, Annie (Jeanne Nicole Ní Áinle), finds herself adjudicating between them all.
With a single setting of a sleek kitchen designed with sharp geometry by Maree Kearns, a sense of dread is maintained by Garth McConaghie’s rumbling sound design and Sarah Jane Shiels’ lighting, as the dark stage is framed in flashes of neon. Amid lies and blazing accusations, each of these characters is allowed to be credibly contradictory: both selfish and unselfish. For all her painful childhood experiences, Annie is not a victim. Even Richard, the egotistical doctor who constantly undermines Hazel, has kind, even endearing, aspects in Huberman’s nuanced performance.
Above all, Dwyer Hogg’s characterisation of Hazel as a highly ambitious, clever woman who fears she is not capable of taking care of her son, is sympathetic and complex. With a second child about to be born, she seems to be conducting a risky life experiment. The conflict between parental responsibility and being professionally fulfilled is not resolved here, an inclusiveness that gives the play its heft.
AtLyric, Belfast, until 4 May