Expect scathing insults, sibling banter, and petty rivarly
Kate Hampson (left) as Isabelle and Katie Singh as Emmeline(Image: Tom Arran for Middle Child)
The expression ‘people in glass houses should not throw stones’ comes to mind as hypocrisy and festering sibling rivalry bubbles to the surface in Middle Child’s latest piece of new theatre, Isabelle by Marc Graham
With a clever set designed to look like a conservatory, this witty play about wealth and family politics is the first to be performed at Middle Child’s new home at 69 Humber Street.
The premise is this: Isabelle – a liberated, driven, and never-married career woman – invites her three adult children to her posh Avenues house for their first get-together in more than a decade. They suspect grave news – is their mother dying? And if so, how much do they stand to gain?
Interesting questions are raised about the comfortably well-off, and how fair they want society to be really . The grown-up children are by no means struggling, yet have a sense of entitlement that perhaps other middle-class millennials are supposed to recognise in themselves.
Kate Hampson is equal parts foxy and gregarious as Isabelle, the family matriarch. Bearing the confidence and intellect of a self-made woman, her disappointment with her own children – gainfully employed but hardly trailblazers – scratches away at the surface.
Katie Singh, who previously starred in Biting Point, plays the youngest child, Emmeline. Her chummy relationship with mum starts to feel increasingly codependent as the drama unfolds.
Emily Head is wonderfully understated as Cate. Level-headed and emotionally detached from much of the family politics, her feelings are often conveyed with microexpressions, subtle grimaces, and pauses that hint of things left unsaid. This was a hard role to perform well, yet it was done beautifully.
Jack Chamberlain plays the part of Benjamin, who grew up as the only boy in in a woman-dominated family. His jokes hide a deep well of insecurity; he is the emotionally most fragile of his siblings. At times, it is rather heartbreaking to watch him fall apart.
Finally, we have Sam Waites, who is credited as ‘partner’. As the mysterious outsider, his role is critically important, but (spoilers) the less mentioned about that the better. With a nervous stammer and mouse-like movements, he cuts through every outrageous display of pomposity, while also injecting the play with healthy doses of humour.
With a running time of 75 minutes, the actors had an awful lot of snappy dialogue to remember, and yet it never sounded like they were reading rehearsed lines; every scathing insult, every wounded retort, flowed as if it had popped into their heads in real time. It was a harmony of brilliant dialogue and brilliant acting.
While I have limited first-hand experience of the type of people Isabelle parodies, it was still immensely fun to watch this spectacularly messy family tear itself apart.
The play is recommended for fans of the TV dramas Succession, The White Lotus, Bad Sisters, and Industry. With some scenes of violence and mature language, including the c-word and f-bomb, the play is recommended for ages 14+.
Isabelle is showing at Middle Child from May 15-31. Tickets cost between £15 and £19, with both afternoon and evening performances, and two performances with live BSL interpretation on Saturday, May 30.
Buy tickets or find out more at middlechildtheatre.co.uk
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