Review by Mark Quinn
Our New Girl begins with a truly shocking image in the dark (that, of course, I won’t be spoiling here) contrasted immediately with a blinding light. This is a perfect metaphor for Nancy Harris’s script, which keeps the balance of comedy and anxiety teetering on a knife’s edge.
You may know Harris’s name as the scribe of The Dry, which similarly blends family drama with levity. This play, skilfully re-staged by Rhiann Jeffrey and The Lyric Theatre, pre-dates the series, with its original production premiering at the Bush Theatre, London, in 2012.
Lisa Dwyer Hogg is absolutely stellar as Hazel, a mother losing control over balancing her work, pregnancy, son and husband at a restive pace. When a new nanny is thrown into the mix things really come to a head.
Particularly, as her husband Richard (Mark Huberman) is, quite literally, missing in action. He’s in off in Haiti, supporting disaster relief through his work as a plastic surgeon and has covertly employed Annie (Jeanne Nicole Ní Áinle) to support (or spy?) on his wife in their London home.
The kitchen, where the entirety of the play is set, wouldn’t look out of place in Good Housekeeping – Richard’s quite right to want show it off when approached by journalists wishing to promote his benevolent work. This is just one thorn in a full rose bush of invalidations for Hazel, who just wants her husband’s support in the final stretch of her pregnancy.
When their son Daniel’s behaviour becomes increasingly erratic and worrying, the push and pull of parenting becomes proper edge-of-the-seat stuff. During this performance, the disturbed Daniel was ably played by Canice Doran. A perfect balance of innocent and eerie – Doran is definitive proof that the future is very bright for the NI stage.
Ní Áinle and Huberman are equally unsettling – particularly in a second act scene where you may think you know where the action is heading, but somehow it ends up creepier and more perverse than anticipated.
The lack of control felt by Hazel amplified by the increasingly bizarre and inconsistent behaviour of both herself and those around her, comes second only to her most furtive fear – being a parent.
This is a production so finely tuned you may eagerly anticipate the violin strings to snap suddenly in the play’s denouement. Our New Girl is much too clever for that and all the better for it. Razor-sharp in both thrill and wit this is a taut and tense two hours.
Rating: ★★★★☆ (Very Good)
Our New Girl is at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast until 4 May 2025
