Barrier(s) is a queer love story about a couple with vastly different experiences of the world. Alana (Em Prendergast) is hearing, while Katie (Zoë McWhinney) is deaf. Created by Deafinitely Theatre, which blends British Sign Language and spoken English, the play moves from the initial awkwardness of their first meeting at a kids’ party, through Alana’s early missteps, into a big, heart-on-sleeve portrait of their relationship’s highs and lows.
Eloise Pennycott’s script unfolds episodically: one year, Alana struggles with the basics of BSL; the next, the couple sign to each other with ease. From the outset, electricity runs between them, shown best in quiet sections of movement directed by Raffie Julien. McWhinney and Prendergast build Katie and Alana’s relationship into one of tenderness and care. Each look is charged by their connection, and there’s a lot of laughter between them, too.
Staged by the company’s artistic director, Paula Garfield, the play has a sugary, storybook quality at first: sketches appear across a back wall to establish the setting of each scene. Together, the couple celebrate anniversaries and dream about their future: even when they argue, it’s not long before they are back in each other’s arms.
Underneath the romance is the reality of a broken, unfair system. Even while pregnant, it takes Katie weeks to get a doctor’s appointment with a BSL interpreter and the school for deaf children where she works is constantly under threat of closure. Marie Zschommler’s sound design swells with anger in moments of tension and the sense of injustice is stark.
The ending breaks away from everything that’s come before as the script is literally torn up and the pair launch into a celebration of Deaf culture. It is uplifting, but the breaking-the-fourth-wall shift feels overfamiliar. Frustratingly, it leaves the main story hanging, and with so much life thrown into Alana and Katie, we long to properly bid them farewell. Still, it’s definitely important, hard-hitting stuff from a company that continues to educate and entertain.
• At Birmingham Rep until 25 October. Then at Home, Manchester, 6-8 November and Camden People’s theatre, London, 11-29 November.
