Otherland
Our bodies are strange, alien things. In her new play of two strikingly different halves, Chris Bush explores womanhood and the shifting identities of our skin. We are led through the eyes of Jo (Jake Anouka, restless and hungry) and Harry (Fizz Sinclair, stoic and soft) as their bodies go through enormous change, one becoming pregnant, the other starting to take hormones as she transitions. What a quietly radical act it is to lay a trans and cis experience side by side, and say look: this is what it is to be a woman.
No stranger to ambitious, expansive stories, Bush adapted the Odyssey for hundreds of performers across the country, and housed multiple generations on a Sheffield Estate in her Olivier Award-winning musical, Standing at the Sky’s Edge. She writes her characters’ hearts on their sleeves, always seeking connection even in situations of turmoil. She does the same here, as she throws Jo and Harry into these transitional, defining moments of their lives. Though at times the storytelling feels heavy-handed, with lyrics pointing out the obvious and messages overstated, in other moments the story challenges us with knotty, thorny, nuance.
We meet Jo and Harry on their wedding day, but the story quickly sweeps them apart when Harry starts to transition. Her journey is sometimes hard to watch, particularly the conversations with her mum (Jackie Clune, heart-breakingly pushy). ‘You can’t put your entire life on hold,’ she is told, as her mum fails to see that’s...