Harry and Jo are breaking up. We have glimpsed them, fleetingly, as a perfect couple – surrounded by a chorus of friends on their wedding day. Five years on, Harry wants to live out her transgender identity and Jo just wants to escape.
Chris Bush’s new play brims with humour and compassion. She describes it as “the most personal thing I’ve ever written” but this is not a mere “trans play” and for women it will be touchingly relatable. The ex-couple’s stories take us in diverging directions: we watch Harry navigating her new life, from bathroom politics and passport difficulties to her own mother’s microaggressions. Meanwhile, Jo heads to the Inca Trail like “Beyoncé in hiking boots” only to fall – literally – for Gabby, who wants to have children with her.
From musical interludes and joyous clubbing choreography, the second half leaps into full-blown magical realism, a device that enables Bush to delve deeper into its protagonist’s embodied experiences. The success of the transition between the two styles is to the credit of director Ann Yee, flowing her cast around the circular pool that opens up in Fly Davis’s set.
Not all the imagery is subtle however: Harry becomes a scaly sea creature and scientific freak, barred from the land by torch-wielding female elders. But the comparison between her changing anatomy and that of the pregnant Jo, with her slowing movements and shifting bones, are an effective projection of shared humanity.
Performances underline the individual transformations. Jade Anouka’s Jo begins as an uncontainable, moving scribble of energy while the appearance of the brilliant Amanda Wilkin as Gabby brings an instant chemistry that really gets the production rolling. It’s a moving contrast to the quiet, understated yearning of Fizz Sinclair’s Harry, retreating from social and work appearances, and an all-too-fixed image on her Zoom calls home.
Not all the sentiment will land for everyone and certain scenes can come across like empathy tests (when Harry is sexually harassed for the first time as a woman, she finds it “violating and validating”). But it is a powerful reminder of how theatre lets us live beyond our own bodies.
At the Almeida theatre, London, until 15 March
