One-star for this average play about family breakdown at The Almeida. Naima Khan reviews The Knot of the Heart.
I can still hear Lisa Dillon's shrill cry of “Mummy!” I think it will stay with me. I think it will irritate me for the rest of my life. It's hard to hear from a twenty seven year old, you see, the word “mummy”. Surely people grow out of that?
Unfortunately, that was all that stayed with me from The Knot of the Heart at Almeida Theatre. For me, that was the only difficult thing to watch. In fact it wasn't difficult to watch, it was difficult to hear. The rest of the play – the drug taking, the crying, the threats – was in no way as affecting as it should be. Even when things get really bad (we're talking sexual assault and prostitution here) it's just too predictable to have much of an effect. Maybe that says something about my theatre-going habits but these topics are not ground-breaking and in The Knot of The Heart they're never fully explored.
Dillon plays Lucy, a pretty, privileged former children's TV presenter currently addicted to opium. She's on a downward spiral and her lovely mother can't help but enable her habit. In a particularly strange scene, we hear Lucy tell her doctor how her mother meets her dealer to buy her drugs and sometimes brings him baked goods. We never see it, we just hear about it. Surely the complete oddity of having a sweet, middle-aged woman bringing cake and cash to a dealer would be a stirring sight? Instead writer David Eldridge opts to tell us, not show us. Frustratingly, this happens throughout. When Lucy finds herself in danger, threatened by her dealer and fearing for her life, the audience hears her mother's panicky reaction to Lucy's desperate phone call home. We don't hear the phone call; just the limp reaction of a mother who has no idea what to do anyway. Perhaps if I were a parent I might feel differently.
The acting, thankfully, is notable. Lisa Dillion as Lucy, Margot Leicester as her mother and Abigail Cruttenden as her straight-laced sister are all great and Kieran Bew playing all the males roles is particularly impressive. Disappointingly, they're working with a pretty average script on a pretentious set that rotates and remains oddly neat throughout all the emotional mess.
A drug addiction is harrowing, or at least it should be. Lucy's addiction facilitates her family's breakdown and squeezes some skeletons out of the cupboard. But since we don't see her struggle between hits, there's no opportunity for the audience to take in the issues and behaviour that culminates in a drug habit. Neither the addiction nor the family breakdown are that emotive and both are quite predictable.
One memorable aspect is that the family can't really believe it's happening to them and they each have very different reactions to it. There's talk of “families like ours” which brings up issues of class and honesty that are usually great subject matter for the stage. But in The Knot of The Heart, it's only a certain kind of junkie who can describe a hit as “the best cuddle of your life”.
The Knot of the Heart runs at Almeida Theatre until 30th April.
Image Credit: Keith Pattison
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