Every One

Two everyday tragedies are at the heart of Jo Clifford's new play – a sudden death and a slow decline in old age. It's not a bundle of laughs, then, but neither is it as relentlessly grim as that summary might suggest.

The audience is directly introduced to a likeable family of five – mum, dad, son, daughter and grandma – and their unremarkable lives. “It just might as well be you up here,” Kathryn Howden's Mary points out, just in case the message isn't clear enough from the title and self-conscious set-up.

Clifford's programme notes reveal a tangle of very personal influences, and the result is a tear-jerking but lightweight work that is not quite the uplifting reaffirmation of life we were promised.

The introduction of Death as a sixth character is initially interesting – thanks to Liam Brennan's skill as an actor and the surprising way director Mark Thomson brings him onto the stage – but in trying to introduce commentary about materialism and the decline of religious observance, Clifford has her newly deceased character utter dialogue that doesn't ring true with what has gone before. Here, Death is not frightening, but he is extremely patronising.

Jonathan Hackett delivers a lovely performance as the father and both Howden and Tina Gray make the most of what they've been given as the mother and grandmother respectively, but the younger characters are barely written, and their parallel pledges of creativity push the cringe factor off the scale. There are some nice moments, but this feels like a rough draft.