'Monstrous Heart' review or 'Has this bear been stuffed?'

Monstrous Heart, Oliver Emmanuel

Stephen Joseph Theatre, 9th October 2019

Written for The Guardian 

Gareth Nicholls directed Crocodile Fever at this year’s Edinburgh festival and Ulster American the year before that, both to critical acclaim. He seems to have a taste for knotty, angry dramas with strong female roles. All these factors feature in Oliver Emanuel’s new play about a dysfunctional mother and her doubly dysfunctional daughter, who collide catastrophically after years apart. There’s spitting fury, spilt blood and even a talking dead bear (with a growling voiceover from Tanya Moodie), but The Monstrous Heart never comes to life.

When Beth bursts into her mother Mag’s remote mountainside cabin, she brings the cold weather with her as well as ugly memories from the past. In no time at all, the pair’s back history has been hastily unfurled. We quickly discover that Beth has been released from prison and that both Beth and Mag have struggled with addiction, anger and motherhood. When a silent child (Pippa Bruce) emerges from behind a door, another piece of the pair’s past clumsily falls into place.

The characters unravel at double-quick speed, to the extent that it becomes hard to believe in their past or present selves, or connect with either. Charlene Boyd plays Beth as a prowling beast, circling her prey – hungrily, desperately, occasionally hopefully. Her laugh is an ugly sound: a gasping for breath or maybe a cry for help. Christine Entwisle, as Mag, starts out with her shoulders slumped and her eyes downcast. But in just a few short scenes, she transforms from an anxious and sober woman into an alcohol-swilling demon; dangerous, wild and almost entirely without compassion.

The acting is committed and intense. There’s also some nicely detailed direction from Nicholls, who finds real meaning in seemingly throwaway moments, such as when Beth carefully shakes down her coat, only to coolly drop it on the floor seconds later. But this determinedly dramatic play ends up feeling rushed and remote. Mother and daughter scream at each other, attack each other and pretty much destroy each other, all in just over an hour. In the end there’s precious little left for them, or the audience, to hold on to.