When Iago causes Othello to doubt himself, it only takes the slightest trigger for the seed of jealousy to take root. It’s the same in Frances Poet’s Gut, except what gnaws away at Kirsty Stuart’s Maddy, turning her from a sparky young mother into a neurotic creature of violent intent, is the possibility – just the possibility – that her toddler, Joshua, has been abused by a stranger.
The evidence is as circumstantial as Desdemona’s misplaced handkerchief, but such is her protective instinct – initially supported and sometimes exceeded by Peter Collins as her even-tempered husband – that she starts to see danger everywhere. It’s in the sequence of neighbours played with creepy ambivalence by George Anton; it’s in the intrusive questioning of social services; it’s even in Lorraine McIntosh’s sweet and caring mother-in-law.
The references to Jimmy Savile and Gary Glitter might have lost their topical sting since her script was nominated for the Bruntwood prize in 2015, but today’s Mumsnet generation will recognise Poet’s cocktail of real and perceived hazards. Hers is a vision of a society where hypervigilance has replaced trust, where the gap between sensible parental oversight and pathological control is frighteningly small.
The play holds the audience spellbound because Maddy’s uncertainty is so plausible; when it comes to the crunch, how good is anybody’s gut instinct? In Zinnie Harris’s clean, sharply focused production, this tension takes visual form as upturned boxfuls of nursery toys disrupt the cool lines of Fred Meller’s set. Chaos is just around the corner. If Poet softens the final blow, she nonetheless exposes a fault line of social dysfunction with a relentless and transfixing logic.
- the Traverse, Edinburgh. Box office: 0131-228 1404. Then at the Tron, Glasgow, 16-19 May. Box office: 0141-552 4267.
