Review: Snake in the Grass
As you enter a performance space, more often than not, a set rushes at you with its questions. Where? A back-garden featuring an outhouse and a tennis courtyard. What? Tranquil birdsong belying a certain tension. Who? Well, exactly!
Two sisters are reunited upon the death of their father after having spent most of their lives apart. The youngest, Miriam (Emily Winter), was 9 when last the two girls breathed the same air. We meet the elder sister first, Annabel (Deirdre Davis), fresh from a long-haul flight from Tasmania. Expecting to meet her sister, she is rather bewildered to be confronted by her father’s erstwhile nurse (Ann Louise Ross). She soon establishes that this is the woman her sister spoke of in her letters. So, why is she here now, at the house, when she has been resolutely sacked? The nurse informs her that her younger sister – who has spent her prime years looking after her father – has changed. Not changed through the passage of time, but fundamentally changed. For the worse. And she, Annabel, should take care. It transpires Miriam has murdered her abusive father…and the nurse has a letter of accusation to back it up.
Negotiation is the name of the game. First, between the nurse and the older, wealthier sister. Then between the sisters themselves. The nurse is ‘taken care of’ in something of a farcical manner. It is the first indication that there is something askew with the characterisation of Alan Ayckbourn’s play. Betwixt and between farce and naturalism, it leaves the audience wondering who these sisters really are. A jet-lagged Annabel is confronted first with patricide and then a clichéd plan for dispatching a troublesome nurse. It is often hard to believe the discourse which takes place. Particularly given that these sisters have not seen each other for 40+ years. Ayckbourn’s premise that one of the sisters lives in Tasmania is used deliberately to impart the vast distance between these siblings. Written in 2002, it is set in the most recent past last unpopulated by mobile phones. And therein lies the problem: this degree of distanciation typically does not augur well for sisterhood…especially when one sister has been left with all of the care duties whilst the other has focussed solely on their career. Jen McGinley’s beautiful set together with the stellar performances of Winter, Davis and Ross do a lot of the heavy lifting as the unfolding narrative tends finally to farce. When the twist itself has a twist, then plot is king, and it is difficult to abate the accompanying air of cynicism. Reportedly, Ayckbourn wrote Snake in the Grass as an apology to the female actors in his Scarborough theatre company upon having written Haunting Julia featuring an all-male cast. It is a worthy sentiment which unfortunately plays out as afterthought.
Snake in the Grass was performed at Dundee Rep, 13th Sept - 5th Oct.