Sgript Cymru's final production before the company's merger with the Sherman Theatre is fittingly about a name change - taken for survival - and the far-reaching consequences of that action. How the company will fare in its new incarnation remains to be seen. For now though, it leaves us with an immensely powerful, ambitious family drama packed full of lies, self-deceit and secrets bubbling away toxically just beneath the surface.
Language and identity are writer Meredydd Barker's key themes in a poetic, symbolic script that tussles with hefty existential questions. A life taken and a name stolen during wartime comes back to haunt the Murazzo family decades later, causing them to question who they really are, and ponder whether the sins of a father inevitably come to rest on later generations.
The drama's two timeframes play out at either end of Sean Crowley's sparse, narrow set, with a riverbank at one end and a family kitchen at the other. The two worlds intriguingly mirror each other, and gradually come close enough for the dark truths in each to emerge and collide. As this happens, the two finest performances in a strong cast, from Eiry Hughes as the cowering Isabel Murazzo, terrified of the future, and Philip Ralph as her disappointing, troubled father, Paul, are completely fixating.
The scenes between them, played out in this intimate space only inches from the audience, are claustrophobic, intense and entirely riveting in this finely written drama that seethes with bitter secrets right to the very end.
· Until March 17. Box office: 029-2030 4400.
