The Stage

The Knot of the Heart

Published Friday 18 March 2011 at 10:59 by Heather Neill

David Eldridge’s subject is addiction. Lucy is at the beginning of a glamorous career in children’s television when she is caught smoking heroin, loses her job and begins a downward spiral into degradation and despair. But addiction comes in many guises and Eldridge is just as interested in the complex psychology of the dependencies within Lucy’s middle class family.

Lisa Dillon (Lucy) and Margot Leicester (Barbara) in The Knot of the Heart at the Almeida theatre Photo: Keith Pattison

Peter McKintosh’s design moves swiftly, using the Almeida’s revolve, from Islington garden to hospital and crisis centre, from cafe to beach. In these short scenes Lucy’s relationships with her mother and sister are examined in meticulous detail as Eldridge strips away layers of jealousy, misunderstanding and deceit. The words “I love you”, he implies, can be a weapon, a means of control or a cry for help.

Under Michael Attenborough’s deft direction, Lisa Dillon - for whom the part was written - is superb as Lucy. A slight figure, she can seem dainty or emaciated, pathetic or maddeningly headstrong. Margot Leicester as her mother Barbara, wine glass in hand, is horribly convincing as a woman blind to her own dangerous desperation to be needed. Widowed when Lucy was a baby and at a loss in an unfamiliar world, she smothers her favourite, while Lucy’s lawyer sister Angela (Abigail Cruttenden) develops a carapace to cope with her second best role.

Eldridge does not duck painful truths but nevertheless provides a modicum of hope as the three women face up to them. By delving unflinchingly into a specific, extreme case, he casts a fierce light on many a ‘normal’ family. Given his present form, his next play, The Stock Da’wa, which opens next month at Hampstead Theatre, must be eagerly anticipated.