Here’s a story full of ghostly presences who take up too much space, and lonely people who don’t take up quite enough. It’s easy to understand why the original novel, by Mexican author Valeria Luiselli, attracted glowing reviews. This is a strikingly imaginative story, ostensibly about a broken marriage but really about the gap between who we think we might be and who we eventually become. Ellen McDougall’s production is fun to wrestle with, although hard to really get hold of.
McDougall’s adaptation is clever but a little confusing. There are three different narratives, all battling to be heard. The primary one takes place in Mexico, where a nameless Woman is writing her memoir while her marriage falls apart. The second unfolds in New York, where the Woman worked as a literary translator when she was young. And the final plotline involves an early 20th-century Mexican poet, Gilberto Owen, whose work and personality gradually begin to bleed into the Woman’s life.
It’s an awful lot to juggle, especially with a source text as delicate and deliberately obscure as this. Jimena Larraguivel plays the Woman with a gentle charm, while she clambers on the huge family table to tell her story. But the Woman is a necessarily distant character and it is only near the end, when she boils over with frustration, that she feels present. Neil D’Souza is good fun as the architect husband, who is keen to help tell his wife’s story – even if it means crowding her out. Anoushka Lucas is softly mesmerising as a haunting musician who weaves through the show, and Santiago Huertas Ruiz, who alternates with Juan-Leonardo Solari as the Woman’s son, is full of humour and warmth.
One senses this is a show about a woman struggling to be seen, but one never quite feels it. Jessica Hung Han Yun’s nimble lighting and George Dennis’s evocative sound design come closest to capturing the essence of the story. With a flicker of lights and smattering of sound effects, they rustle up New York streets, clubs or cafes – and all those seemingly fleeting moments that make up the stories of our lives.
At the Gate theatre, London, until 8 February
