“DON’T LOOK AT ME”: ‘The Other Place’, A Play That Begs You to Avert Your Eyes, Explained

Editor's Note: Amy's intriguing piece explores The Other Place in depth, remarking upon story and script choices that reveal major spoilers. This is not intended to be a mere review of the play, but probes farther and questions harder. I hope you enjoy her good writing as much as I had the pleasure of reviewing it.

This production, a snapshot moment in the life of a family as it struggles to process a shared loss, isn’t what anyone will expect it to be. Entering the National's Lyttleton Theatre for a brand new twist on the legendary Antigone tale, audiences going in blind without the foresight of reviews will react with pantomimic gasps and leave slightly stunned speechlessness.

Emma D’Arcy (House of the Dragon) and Alison Oliver (Conversations with Friends) play two sisters Annie and Issy – distanced by mental health struggles following the suicide of their father, they come back together in tentative amiability for the scattering of his ashes. Tobias Menzies (The Crown) and Nina Sosanya (Love Actually) play uncle and aunt Chris and Erica, who are renovating the old family home in a stalwart attempt to put the horrible event behind them and are keen to rid of the urn that has been sitting in the house for some years. 

The company of The Other Place in rehearsals. Photo Credit: Sarah Lee

D’Arcy’s character presents an obstacle to this. Immediately coming across as slightly contrary and off-beat, her arrival is anticipated when the play begins. She quickly makes her desires known for the ashes not to be discarded but kept in her father’s house. However, with her airy, faintly detached line delivery and kooky outfit, her ideas seem to be taken more as flighty notions than secure convictions, by a family with a less-than-thorough understanding of mental health.

The tone is set by darkly comic moments in the opening scenes, and a distinct lack of ceremony surrounding death – some highlights include the decanting of human ashes into a Ziplock bag, and D’Arcy’s excellent delivery of “please can we not partition dad”. The awkward, familial back-and-forth of the first half gets a lot of laughs. The elder men are quick to mistrust and tut at Annie, while Issy uses all her efforts to stay sympathetic, and Erica sticks to discussions of the home renovation and a small donation they are making to a mental health charity. Then it all escalates when Chris becomes adamant that the ashes will be scattered that day. Annie takes ridiculously drastic measures in return, incurring Chris’ wrath, and Issy watches the whole situation hurtle downhill in panicked disbelief.

The company of The Other Place in rehearsals. Photo Credit: Sarah Lee

The first half reaches its climax after the group returns from a humiliating memorial service – described by one character in comedically painful detail. Annie, now dressed in a baggy set of her dad’s old clothes, is tackled by her uncle Chris, grappling and almost violating her in search of the missing ashes, before kicking her out of the house. The dynamic now irreparably damaged, the family sits down for an excruciating takeaway dinner whilst she struggles to pitch a tent in the garden.

These events all take place in a new open-plan kitchen, complete with island and sliding-glass windows, and serious discussions are continually permeated with comments about 'the light’ in the room, and how nice and bright the room has become since these new installations – which, ironically, only seem to look out onto the gaping black hole of the theatre's backstage. The space is still slightly rough and unlived-in, with bare walls and construction debris, calling attention to a family grasping at straws of marble worktops and built-in ceiling lights to fend off its darkness.

It is midway through the play, after the climactic tussle between Chris and Annie, when the stage opens out and is suddenly backlit with blue light. Several ghostly trees leer out of the darkness behind the set. From here on, the impression of a somewhat ordinary family is completely subverted. In one scene, we see an old family friend attempt sexual advances in a skin-crawling, drunken encounter. In another, Chris places a cloth over his head to make a confession – that he hasn’t felt like himself in years, not since Annie left – which leads to the latter slowly approaching him, lifting the cloth, and then joining him underneath it. You really can't conceive what is about to happen until it does; even when Erica comes down the stairs without them hearing and glimpses it, it isn't overkill but brilliantly horrendous.

The company of The Other Place in rehearsals. Photo Credit: Sarah Lee

There is a great use of proxemics between the characters on stage. In a revelatory moment after Erica reveals "your sister kissing – kissing – your uncle!", where the four characters stand in a suddenly frozen, front-facing-back-facing zig-zag across stage: Annie cringing, Chris back-turned and stock-still, Issy stunned and Erica maniacally fierce.

In true Greek-tragedy style, the play meets a gory end. Chris, as a tormented patriarch à la a modern King Creon, stands over the finale. Perhaps it over-relies on its tragic form, and some of its conflicts (the perverse bond of ‘weirdness’ between uncle and niece, and the broken relationship between the two sisters) want development before the abrupt cut-off. 

The Other Place confines itself, in Aristotelian tradition, to tragic unities – taking place in a span of less than 24 hours, refining itself to one physical location, and following the one central drama surrounding their father’s passing. If this is a retelling of Antigone, then perhaps the story could have breathed more by expanding into the leeway allowed by the ‘modern adaptation’ genre, and fleshed out its contemporary exploration of themes, such as mental health and family trauma, which would diversify it from the source material. Instead, the story’s pacing becomes a blitz, hurtling to a close, and you find the tethers of each storyline sliding through your fingers.

The company of The Other Place in rehearsals. Photo Credit: Sarah Lee

But the instant impact of its ending doesn’t leave you wanting much. Tobias Menzies' Chris slowly slides the glass door shut on the baroque scene unfurling outside, repeating one line ("DON'T LOOK AT ME") at increasing volume to the audience, until the lights snap to black. Its sheer intensity makes up for some of the half-baked story-telling; the feeling you are left with, of wanting to scramble back and rewind time, of being lost for words at the hell-for-leather race to the finish and of holding the loose ends of each plotline in your hands, only adds to the effect.

Then again, tragedies are always concerned with the irredeemable and the inevitable, so we really should have seen it coming.

The Other Place is a twisted and singular success, with echoes of the original tragedy in its melodrama, and yet it holds a chilling contemporaneity in its psychology. Despite the shortcomings of the quick, 80-minute runtime, the play leaves no small mark on the emotions in the room. Nothing emphasises the need for this art form like gaping and grimacing at a scene alongside several hundred others. As a theatrical experience, it is a huge achievement.

The Other Place runs at the National's Lyttelton Theatre until 9 November.