Theatre review: Everything Between Us

Published on Thursday 12 May 2011 19:30

EVERYTHING BETWEEN US TRON THEATRE, GLASGOW ****

ON SCOTLAND'S shoestring theatre scene, the writer, actor and director David Ireland is fast emerging as one of the most exciting talents around; and in this hair-raisingly intense two-hander staged by Tinderbox of Belfast, and already seen in America and Ireland, he attempts a notoriously difficult genre, the short play which dramatises the serious impact of politics on private and emotional lives.

The scene is a government building in Northern Ireland, where the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is about to get under way. Teeni is the long-vanished sister of Sandra, the neatly suited Assembly member who is the Protestant representative on the Commission; and as Sandra's big moment approaches, Teeni bursts into the room, spews racist insults at the black South African chairwoman, and is only saved from arrest when Sandra undertakes to calm her down.

So for 70 minutes, Teeni – played by a weird but electrifying Claire Lamont – rages and storms over the lies and silences that inevitably accompany the reconciliation process, while Sandra reveals the hidden distress in her own life.

The play is not always fully in control of its own explosive material. Teeni is a demonic character, as sexy and entertaining as she is bigoted, damaged and wrong; and laughter sometimes seems like a dangerous response to her savage humour. For its courage in exploring some of the dark forces that oppose the peace process, though, this play deserves all the praise it has won; and the two actresses – Lamont and Tara Lynne O'Neill – almost literally give it hell, for 70 compelling minutes.