Bea's body is useless to her. For eight years she has laid marooned in her bed, surrounded by the evidence of the life she once led as a student before illness struck. Now she is dependent on her barrister mother, Katherine, and a carer to do everything for her – even clean her bottom. On the outside she is almost paralysed, but inside, she's dancing and always reaching for the light.
It's the inside that we mostly see in Mick Gordon's cunningly constructed play. For a show about death and the limits of compassion, Bea is surprisingly joyous. At times it is killingly funny as we watch the day-to-day routine of Bea and her Northern Irish carer, Not Gay Ray, whose duties include acting out scenes from A Streetcar Named Desire and administering cunnilingus. But Bea wants more. She wants to die, and her physical condition means that she needs help from Ray and the mother who gave her life. There are words – widow and orphan – to help demonstrate the fact that a husband or parent has died, but nothing like that for a child. "Even language knows that this isn't meant to happen," says Katherine.
Could you kill your own child if that's what they really wanted? That's the nub of this humane play full of laughter. That, and the fact that we all have limits to our understanding and empathy for other people's situations. Cancer? Oh, that's terrible. ME? Well, it's not really a proper illness is it? By never defining Bea's condition, Gordon doesn't let us off the hook.
Like so many of Gordon's plays, Bea betrays a slightly schematic approach to his material, as if the writer's brain always gets the better of his heart. But it's a very worthwhile evening, with Pippa Nixon and Al Weaver outstanding as they laugh their way towards an understanding.
Until 8 January. Box office: 020-7478 0100.
