Angel has gathered her family together but this is no celebration. She wants to make them all consider their actions, confront the corrosive legacy handed down to them by their long-dead matriarch, Nanny, and face up to their failure to protect Angel when she asked for help as a child.
Played out in Ultz’s clever design, in a stripped-back theatre that feels like a local community hall, the atmosphere becomes fraught as dusk turns to darkness in Nathaniel Martello-White’s compelling drama about a mixed-race family in south London. It’s written in a heightened language and structured so that the past, present and future curl around each other as self-interest, familial ambition, favouritism and grudges create a toxic fug. There is a touch of Debbie Tucker Green in some of the writing.
Torn demands that you keep your wits about you. Played by a spot-on ensemble, led by Adelle Leonce who gives a mighty performance as the damaged Angel, it takes a while for the relationships between the 10 family members to fully emerge. The time slippages can also be confusing but they serve a genuine purpose, reminding us of the frailties of memory, the way we constantly rewrite our own stories, how every narrative has many perspectives and how, while you can’t escape the past, acknowledging it may silence the ghosts clanking in the family basement.
- At the Royal Court Upstairs until 15 October. Box office: 020-7565 5000
