Simon Ward reviews Sanctuary at the Hope Theatre

Christine Rose’s topical and disturbing new play is premiering in a short run at the Hope in Islington. Directed by Broadway stalwart Donna King and starring Laura Shipler Chico as Cassie and Andrea Milton-Furlotti as Amelia, it presents a vision of the near-future somewhere in America where the self-styled ‘Patriot Boys’ and their supporters are running amok in the streets, leaving these two old friends to seek sanctuary in the basement. This being America, of course, the rioters are heavily armed and very dangerous.

Cassie and Amelia are a classic mismatched pair, only friends because of bonds forged long ago in the lunch hall at High School. They don’t live far apart but politically and socially they now inhabit utterly different worlds. They can barely understand each other – whereas Cassie has sworn off men after her husband left her, Amelia (or Amy as she was at school) hasn’t given up in spite of multiple failed marriages. Rose adroitly skewers the atomisation of society where everyone inhabits their own social media bubble and there is no common agreement on the facts. Where Cassie insists that the Capitol rioters were insurrectionists, to Amy they were patriots expressing their democratic right to free speech. To Cassie’s outraged disbelief, Amy can’t accept that a man getting ‘a bit handsy’ could possibly constitute sexual assault.

As they are sparring back and forth, and with Cassie increasingly desperate to move away from politics and transport the pair back to their school days when they were firm friends, the noises from the chaos outside become ever more threatening and intrusive. Yet despite this, they cannot even agree on the situation they are really in – Amelia thinks Cassie is making an unnecessary fuss and it’s just ‘boys being boys’ and ‘letting off steam’. So much so that when Cassie annoys her just once too often she storms out and is determined to make her way back home. And that’s when we all come to realise that there are some facts which are so brutal that they cannot simply be denied or manipiulated.

I suspect that there may have been a rush to get this piece to the stage with the result that it felt, at times, under-rehearsed. Some of the rhythms of the back and forth felt a little wayward and not all the ideas and insights quite landed as they might have done. This seems to me to be a good script, with a very timely message and two extremely capable actors but the whole piece just needs a little more time to allow the alchemy to work fully. It is a good play, with an even better one bursting to get out. Nevertheless this is a valiant effort and I hope it gets the longer run it deserves before too long.

Sanctuary is running at the Hope Theatre, 207 Upper Street, London N1 1RL until Saturday 30th November