Review: SAP, Summerhall

Sap is loosely based on a myth from Ovid's Metamorphoses. As our protagonist, Daphne, finds herself in a complex love triangle against her will, the audience is invited into a tale that is part love story, part tragedy.

Bisexual and guilty of a smattering of internalised biphobia, we first meet Daphne as she has a one-night stand at a work event. It's okay, except there's an ominous spot of foreshadowing when she gets the feeling that if she asked him to stop, he wouldn't. Days later, she meets "wonder woman". An intense tumbling into the lap of lurve ensues, but Daphne fails to tell her new girlfriend that she is bisexual when faced with the fact that she doesn't date bisexual women.

The play wrestles what you might expect from it from under you every time its plot line seems to settle. You fall down with Daphne through romantic comedy, feel the fear as things take a turn into a tense thriller, and at one point you're rooted firmly in horror. Stereotypes usually casually floated around the pages of the tabloids are deconstructed before your eyes, and your expectations about what might happen to the characters are constantly subverted.

Jessica Clark warms the play with her gloriously affable portrayal of Daphne. Rebecca Banatvala, her romantic counterpart (among other things, but no spoilers here), haunts the production and delivers the sophisticated, complex material required of Rafaella Marcus' exceptional script with heart-stopping intensity.

Director Jessica Lazar's direction makes use of every inch of the small, in-the-round stage at the Summerhall's Roundabout. The play is a testimony to the benefits of simplicity when staging plays that are remarkably well written, allowing space for each sentence to land like a feather, or dead weight, upon the audience depending on where we are in the narrative.

An extraordinary, mythical, intricate piece of new theatre.

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