Cordelia Lynn’s disturbing exploration of inherited trauma packs a powerful punch

From the get-go, Cordelia Lynn’s two protagonists are engaged in a sort of dangerous dance that is by turns wary, ardent, passionate and physical. But when passion turns violent, there are unexpected and shocking twists.

Him and Her (they are never named) meet at a party. She is a young Jewish physicist, dedicated to her research; he is a postgraduate student, equally dedicated to activism. The budding attraction is evident, even though he is in her face, virtue signalling with his ‘right on’ babble about the protests he's engaged in, apparently oblivious that he's too close for comfort as she asks him politely, “Could you please stop leaning over me.”

This is all beautifully embodied by Abigail Weinstock (in her first role out of drama school), delicately sensitive and sensuous as Her alongside Tom Mothersdale’s edgy, excitable and self-centred Him. They engage in a mysteriously bare space with a threatening sloping ceiling (designer Basia Bińkowska), carpeted underfoot in a dark brown that can be bleak or suffused with warm light, subtly reflecting emotion (lighting Joshua Pharo).

Him and his fellow activists are taking to the streets in support of a living wage for the college cleaners. “As the son of immigrants and child of a cleaner, I identify with the cleaners,” he says, disclosing that he is of Polish descent. Though his mum came from Warsaw, it's revealed that the place the couple have in common is Lemberg (or Lvov) in present-day Ukraine. That their forebears were involved in a shocking act of violence as perpetrator and victim eventually emerges, but not before the pair move in together and begin a relationship that is marked both by tenderness and mutual verbal – and later physical – abuse. All the while, outside their flat, the sinister soundscape of violent right-wing counter demonstrations becomes ever louder (sound Richard Hammarton).

Speaking to us for the new, autumn issue of JR, Lynn explains that “the two important themes in the play that work together are the trauma they realise they've inherited and the violence that they’ve unknowingly inherited. These toxins work inside them and inside their relationship – inside their flat. Obviously politics is the second trigger – what’s happening outside the flat – that’s getting ever worse and impacting on them.”

Lynn’s intentions become graphically clearer when an act of extreme violence is followed by a contrasting epilogue. So far, the action has been set in an unspecified time and place, evidently the 21st-century West. At this point, a minutely-detailed interior descends from the flies (the theatre's rigging system) to superimpose the interior of a Jewish home, complete with Sabbath candles, in 1918 Lemberg. Here we're introduced to Richard Katz's warm, expansive Tatte (grandfather in Yiddish), his cap, waistcoat and beard typical of a traditional early-20th-century Jew, as he carves a little wooden goat. So the scene is set for the genesis of the bloodshed that has doomed future love, tainting it with violence that can be subsumed but not escaped.

Weinstock is now ‘Her’ own great-grandmother Baba, anxious for her young brothers out on the streets helping man the barricades as buildings are torched, for a pogrom is raging and the Jewish quarter is burning. The fate of this little household at the hands of a Polish activist, inflamed himself by the brutality that will echo down the century and beyond, will destroy the possibility of a future that might have promised healing and reconciliation.

Lynn knows what she wants and gets it from a strong creative team, led by director Elayce Ismail who, Lynn says, called it “at heart a dance between two people”. Israeli movement director Yarit Dor clearly gets that too. It all works seamlessly together to realise Lynn’s powerful, disturbing vision.

By Judi Herman

Photos by Helen Murray

Love and Other Acts of Violence runs until Saturday 27 November. 7.30pm (Mon-Sat), 2.30pm (Thu & Sat only). From £10. Donmar Warehouse, WC2H 9LX. donmarwarehouse.com

Read our full interview with Cordelia Lynn in the Autumn 2021 issue of JR.