Writer: Philip de Voni
Director: Kerry Kyriacos Michael
In geology, an ophiolite is a rock section exposed by the collision of tectonic plates. The name is derived from the Greek “ophis”, meaning “snake”, and the stones that get exposed are also known in English as Serpentine – both names reflecting the material’s green, scaly appearance that reminds one of snakeskin.
One place where ophiolite is visible is Cyprus, where the African and Eurasian plates collided 90 million years ago. The impression of two immovable forces colliding forms the basis of Philip de Voni’s The Ophiolite, where two sides of a Cypriot family butt heads.
The play opens in 2019, after the death of a Cypriot who left the island for Britain many years before. His grieving sister, Lucy Christofi Christy’s Aristeia, wants the body disinterred from his London grave, to be reburied in the family plot on the island. His English wife Jennifer (Ruth Lass) is dead set against. This deadlock also starts to affect the two women’s daughters, cousins Xenia (Chrisanthi Livadiotis) and Penelope (Han-Roze Adonis), who were once inseparable but now find themselves in opposition.
As the two branches of the family meet in a solicitor’s office to go over the dead man’s will, Aristeia’s plan is to hide the paperwork for her late brother’s re-interment, which she knows his widow will never agree to willingly, amongst all the other documents that Jennifer must sign in the process of settling her husband’s estate.
De Voni, in his first full-length play, is at his strongest in this first act, with the butting heads of two matriarchs cackling with tension. And while it may be that some of the dialogue is a little too on the nose, and some of its themes a little too readily restated (the mantra “blood is thicker than water” is oft repeated), there is a crackle of tension throughout. Most of this is down to Lass’s Jennifer, whose intransigence feels rooted in a firm belief that her husband valued his life in London with her far more than the family he left behind.
That rock-solid refusal to budge, mirrored in Christy’s Aristeia, feels rooted in character and a believable history. Hints exist that Jennifer’s depiction of her husband’s feelings towards Cyprus may not be wholly true – daughter Penelope (Han-Roze Adonis) has happy memories of summers spent playing in “the grove”, a family plot of land that she believes her father meant to bequeath to her, and feels an affinity to the island, and her father, as a result. That helps deepen the complexity of the familial struggles.
Still, the conclusion of Act I stretches plausibility, especially in the relationship between Jennifer and her daughter. It is that relationship that de Voni explores more deeply in Act II, set in an Oxfordshire retirement bungalow some six years later. As Jennifer nears the end of her life with a terminal cancer diagnosis, she summons Penelope, whom she has not seen since the solicitor’s office in Cyprus some years before.
Familial estrangement is no stranger to dramatic interpretation, but while in Act I Jennifer’s intransigence felt rooted in character, here it feels more like plot. As Lass and Adonis take verbal chunks out of each other, there is a sense of artificiality about the whole enterprise that grows ever more pronounced.
Matters aren’t helped by each character having extended monologues in which they each explain their position. Having one character use a convoluted, if readily apparent, metaphor while the other keeps interrupting with “what do you mean?” does neither actor any favours. Adonis, in particular, is stuck with a character that feels adrift from reality. It’s never quite clear how old Penelope is meant to be, or what might cause her to turn from held together to breaking down and back, other than plot contrivance.
As the quality of de Voni’s premise runs out of steam, Penelope screams to Jennifer’s new husband, Dominic (Sam Cox), that they’re not in a Chekhov play. That much is, sadly, obvious. Although The Ophiolite touches on similar themes of family conflict arising from estate law, a sense of generational and cultural history, and individual egos, one senses that Anton Chekhov would have a stronger sense of character than is on display here.
Runs until 22 February 2026
