Barrier(s) - HOME

THEATRE is at its best when it transports the audience to a world they don’t know or understand and gives audience a flavour of that world and an empathy with the characters who live and breathe in it.

Barrier(s) by Eloise Pennycott is one of those plays. It focuses on a lesbian couple Alana and Katie, who move in together.

One of them, Katie, is deaf. She works at a primary school for children who are also deaf and while we never see the youngsters in her charge, her devotion to duty is arrestingly apparent.

Like every other couple, Alana and Katie have their ups and downs, their arguments and romantic moments.

While Katie frequently vents her frustrations using British sign language, Pennycott doesn’t paint her as a figure of pity thanks to a script full of humour and anger with the writer resisting the temptation to preach or lazily reach for tired old cliches.

Both characters feel very real, thanks in no small part to a natural chemistry nurtured by director Paula Garfield and the performances of Em Prendergast and Zoe McWhinney, whose performances as Alana and Katie left a lasting impression on me.

The ending of this fabulous piece is one of the most original I’ve ever seen. But I have no intention of giving it away here.

This is contemporary theatre at its best for me and I left HOME in Manchester wondering why the run there was so short.

Not to be missed and I have just two more words to say to Eloise Pennycott - more please.

Until Nov 8. Tickets are available from 0161 200 1500. Star rating - 4.5 out of 5.

Photo by Becky Bailey.