MICHAL BONCZA and MARIA DUARTE review Zero, Bring Her Back, Gazer, and The Fantastic Four: First Steps

When It Happens To You
Park Theatre, London
AMERICAN author Tawni O’Dell’s deeply personal memoir about the rape of her grown-up daughter Esme and the shattering after-effects on both her and her children must have been an important cathartic exercise when first performed in New York, with O’Dell playing herself, but risks being too intimate and personalised to fully work on stage.
With Amanda Abbington at the heart of the European Premiere taking Tawni’s role as Tara, Esme’s divorced mother, the play’s simple narrative style becomes more than just a dramatic reading as the enduring impact of the sexual assault ripples out through every element of the family’s existence.

SIMON PARSONS is taken by a thought provoking and intelligent play performed with great sensitivity

SIMON PARSONS is gripped by a psychological thriller that questions the the power of the state over vulnerable individuals

SIMON PARSONS applauds an imaginative and absorbing updating of Strindberg’s classic
