Emotional power play

Bundle of energy: Charlotte Lucas play Billie, a 24-year-old meeting the mother who gave her up for adoption for the first time
10 April 2012

If there is one thing Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith understands, it is the shifting dynamics of a close relationship.

In Honour, her best-known work, she examined the adulterous breakdown of a marriage and a family.

The potent theme here, in this sensitively handled, beautifully calibrated chamber piece, is the long-term aftermath of adoption.

Forty-one-year-old film editor Anna (Kristin Milward) lives in a house as minimalist as the life story she has painstakingly edited for herself.

It's a suitably blank backdrop for the emotional fireworks that accompany her first encounter with 24-year-old Billie (Charlotte Lucas), the daughter that Anna was forced to give up at birth - a bounding, puppyish bundle of energy.

The past actions and present standpoints of the women are compellingly examined by Murray-Smith and brought to dignified life by two fine performances in Nicolette Kay's gripping but measured production.

Billie, the meeting's instigator, searches frantically for the links and connections that will assert the supremacy of the blood tie she has always craved.

Anna prefers ideals to actual people and is, like us, singularly unprepared for the shocking climax. Highly recommended.

Until 17 March 0870 4000 838.

Love Child
Finborough Theatre
Finborough Road, SW10 9ED

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