In classical Greek tragedy the audience is forced to watch as the hero sleepwalks towards their fate. In the playwright Chloë Moss’s Run Sister Run, this descent into tragedy takes place in reverse. Proleptic irony is swapped out for Chekhovian drug addiction.
We first meet two Irish sisters, Connie (Jo Herbert) and Ursula (Kelly Gough) in middle age. Through a series of flashbacks and call-backs, the vicious cyclical patterns that have shaped their relationship over four decades become clear. Ursula wrangles misfortune after misfortune, tangled in self-harm, surrogacy and indeterminable pills. With its folding-chair metal seating, the brick basement of the Arcola Theatre is an apt venue for the themes explored by director Marlie Haco’s production: intimate and tragically uncomfortable.
Designer Tomás Palmer’s set is stripped back: upturned buckets and dried flowers are the few props that accompany a thin, horizontal mirror suspended at head-height. Alex Forey’s white flood-lighting spills down from above the mirror, with an occasional strobe effect between scenes inducing a sense of chaos. Palmer’s costume design is naturalistic and simple; ultimately, the message of the play is that tragedies like these can happen to normal people.
Gough’s vocal endurance is impressive. She regularly lapses into drug-induced shrieks, but is also capable of tender moments that juxtapose with the madness. More restrained, Herbert’s talent is also on show, as she demonstrates the reversal of Connie’s social mobility, with her middle-class English drone gradually slipping back into a broad Irish accent.
The dance segments that take place in scene transitions are incongruous and discordant, untethered from the narrative. But the play’s core themes of nature vs nurture and codependence are well articulated. Run Sister Run leaves the audience deep in thought, even if those thoughts sometimes include: “What’s going on now?
Run Sister Run
Arcola Theatre, London E8
[See also: Evita for the West End masses]
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This article appears in the 23 Jul 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Kemi Isn’t Working