Review: DAUGHTERHOOD, Roundabout @ Summerhall

Pauline stayed at home to care for Dad. Rachel went out into the world to make a difference. When Rachel makes a surprise visit home, no return ticket booked, resentments and sacrifice bubble to the surface, and the two battle through their differences. Though they may both feel duty to their daughterhood, this play is all about sisters.

Charley Miles's script easily captures the comparisons and competition between siblings and the need to be distinctive from one another.

As the beleaguered Pauline, Charlotte Bate's performance is excellent. She moves subtly between frustration with her younger sister, laughing and dancing together, to stifling her tears. She is always wary of "Little Miss Sunshine" breezing back into her life and routine, not knowing when she'll breeze back out again.

As Rachel, Charlotte O'Leary embodies this "Little Miss Sunshine" role, and excels in flashback scenes as her younger self - a child desperate for attention and a teenager desperate for distinction from her sister, ready to make her own mark on the world.

Adding context to the sisters' world, Toyin Omari-Kinch plays the men in their lives - a co-worker, neighbour, ex-boyfriend, doctor and, finally, father. Not all of these scenes or characters are needed. The non-linear narrative occasionally repeats itself or breaks from the tension at the heart of the show.

The Roundabout setting, with its low-tech and bare set, leaves nowhere to hide for the weaker moments of the script, which could have been tightened further. But in the show's strongest moments, it allows Bate and O'Leary's touching performances to shine through. "It's really hard being sisters, isn't it?" Rachel asks. The pair walk a tightrope, but together they keep their balance.

https://festival19.summerhall.co.uk/event/daughterhood/

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