THERE’S something deeply frightening about the precarity at the heart of EV Crowe’s new play, an absurdist take on the life of estate agent and harassed working mother Viv.

“I get so scared of how close we live to not being able to live,” Viv tells us. Having lost a shoe from her only pair, she tries to get through her day wearing only one and, as her foot gets increasingly bloody and swollen, her ability to remain anchored falters. But her desire to somehow carry on remains.

The extraordinary Katherine Parkinson is Viv and the nuance of her tone in her moving depiction of Viv’s slow unravelling and her determination to continue, ever more absurd and bizarre, is
wonderful and her reactions to a talking curtain are a delight. They’re also unsettling.