Innocence by Dea Lohr ***

Appearing as part of the Arcola Theatre’s January season of German plays, Dea Loher’s Innocence , translated by David Tushingham, is just the thing to strip away any lingering festive merriment or excess. It is an astringent black comedy with a cast of strange, mad and disturbed characters. The story of two illegal dock workers witnessing a woman drowning and doing nothing to save her is played out in a dystopian set of corrugated metal walls where the detritus of modern life, books and a television set, are strewn and surrounded by sand, fragments shored up against ruin.

A crazed old woman (Ellen Sheean) intrudes on the bereaved relatives of recent murder victims, claiming to be the mother of the criminal and apologising for her left-handed poet son pleading that she ‘wasn’t being evil’ forcing him to use his right and noticing that the stab wounds show he used his left. Rosa (Caroline Kilpatrick) is trapped in a loveless marriage to an undertaker who takes more care of the cadavers he brings home than of her. Her diabetic amputee mother (the hilarious Ann Mitchell) moves in and stifles Rosa’s attempt at independence. The overarching narrative of the dock workers poses an interesting question of moral culpability but it is the strangeness of the whole ensemble and the creepy atmosphere of the suicide-prone town that really steals the show. This tone is best represented by the blind pole-dancer, Absolute, played by Meredith MacNeill; a feisty but needy and vulnerable waif who picks up one of the dock workers off the street.

In a town where all voices collaborate to shout ‘JUMP!’ at a person threatening to commit suicide from a bridge, because they are holding up the rush hour traffic, strong human bonds are in fact forged. Absolute finds refuge with her new friends, even Rosa’s mother finds a devoted carer in the crazed old woman. Yet it is Rosa’s return to the sea at the end of the play which reinforces the duality at the centre of the play - she is at once free and bound, as she escapes life she is ensnared by the universal compulsion to commit the self to death.

Ellen Sheean gives the most genuine and moving performance; her every move speaking the anguish of her mind. Maggie Steed is great to watch but the part is not a good one, seemingly tacked on without much bearing on the rest of the play. Requiring the characters to frequently narrate their actions and to prelude their lines with introductions, ‘Rosa said…’, the play loses immediacy and realism but this does add to its project of de-familiarisation. Bitingly funny but not afraid to show that suffering often lies at the heart of existence, this is an extraordinary play with which to start the new year.