Wormholes – Omnibus Theatre, London

Writer: Emily Jupp

Director: Scott Le Crass

Wormholes is the story of a bright, breezy party girl being systematically crushed by her controlling, undermining partner. It starts happy, it finishes full of fear. It’s a grim, plausible, important story. It’s a brilliant piece of theatre.

Scott Le Crass directs with a sure hand. On a bare stage, his actor inhabits a multitude of spaces, moods and conditions with movement and gesture – always realistic, always recognisable, always telling. Excellent lighting designer Jodie Underwood effectively supports the actor’s journey with a design that colours the actor’s presence but never, ever intrudes or draws attention to itself. On top of that the production boasts a sound design from composer/ musician Paul Housden that amplifies the mood of the piece with slanting, understated shards of sound, sound that is sort of musical but is mostly underpinning the mood colour.

All of this terrific work, however, is the background to a towering, immaculate, riveting performance from the solo actor Victoria Yeates. She holds the space alone, holding the audience’s rapt attention for 90 minutes and depicting a moral collapse from bubbly fun into crushed terror, all within a framing narrative that requires her to show joy and confusion in equal batches. It is a truly impressive, fantastically well-drawn performance. The possibilities of confusion are ever-present with such a fractured timeline, but Victoria Yeates steers the audience so effectively that confusion is never a factor. She animates a wide range of characters and a wide range of emotions. She is convincing, moving. Outstanding.

The sure-footed writing from Emily Jupp makes this excruciating story accessible. The protagonist is charming, funny, and very relatable. Yeates hits comic notes regularly, and while the play is a realistic and grim story, Jupp and Yeates ensure that it isn’t one-note, it’s never unrelentingly grim. The protagonist is a party girl, a joyous participant in clubbing and cocktails. Her jubilant social presence is a major victim of her partner’s systematic subjugation, but it’s also used very well, brought into play as a dramatic foil to the main thrust of the story. It’s managed very well indeed.

Omnibus Theatre has a strong history of staging challenging, important work. It’s a space that rarely mounts standard stagework and always presents work that’s interesting. It provides a generous platform for new writers. With Wormholes it has found a winner.

Runs until 10 August 2024