Simon Ward reviews Monster at the Seven Dials Playhouse

Abigail Hood’s play, Monster, is set over a twenty year period in Glasgow. It centres on the lives of two girls, teenagers when we first meet them, Kayleigh Grey (played by Hood herself) and Zoe Douglas (Lauren Downie). They take refuge in each other from a world that doesn’t understand them, and where they don’t fit in. Kay, in particular, is always getting in trouble and seems hellbent on sabotaging her life, even though she is obviously clever enough to do well if she chose to. She loves Zoe wildly, romantically, sexually and fantasises about the two of them escaping somewhere so they can live lives of crazy abandon. For her part, Zoe is more conflicted – she loves Kay but she also has a precocious interest in men.

Kay’s mother, Hazel (played with dead-eyed coldness by Sarah Waddell), ekes out a precarious living as a prostitute, and is not above roping the teenage Kay in as well, if that’s what her client demands. There is no love for Kay here. The closest she gets to an adult who cares is her teacher Rebecca Hastie (Lisa Ellis). She sees something in Kay and hopes she might be able to rescue her somehow. As her husband Steve (Steve Hay) points out, however, there is very little she can really do, especially when Kay refuses to be helped. Or maybe Kay is simply incapable of accepting any help – instinctively she knows that she is desperate for love and affection but she doesn’t know how to accept it when it is offered. The terrifying consequences of Kay working through these conflicting emotions bring the first half of the play to its earth-shattering conclusion. The stunned audience is too devastated to applaud – it seems entirely inappropriate.

The second act begins twenty years on from the events portrayed in the first. The ripple effects of Kay’s actions have affected everyone, yet her own life seems, on the surface at least, much better than it was. She is with a man now, John Parker (Kevin Tomlinson), who at last is giving her the love she has been hoping for. Her days of longing to feel Zoe’s breasts seem to be behind her. She has assumed a new identity to go with her new life. But the long shadow of her past cannot be avoided. We discover that Rebecca and Steve’s relationship has not survived – he has moved on while she remains stuck in a cycle of grief with no end in sight. Now it is Kay who is unable to help Rebecca – she lives with the guilt every day but she can’t help getting on with her life as well. Zoe, too, utterly broken by what she witnessed, cannot bear the thought of bringing a child into the world.

This is a powerful, compelling and deeply disturbing work. It asks searching, painful questions for which there are no answers. The rage, pain and love that the characters feel is raw and authentic. The mystery at its heart is how anyone could be capable of such a crime – even the perpertrator doesn’t really know. And there is another question – what do we expect of someone guilty of such a thing? We can hardly bear to look at them, yet they will continue to exist. What would it mean to atone for it? This is a tragedy in which there can be no catharsis because such justice as has been done feels wholly inadequate. Yet we also sympathise and hope that there is the possibility of some kind of new life for Kay. When she and Zoe re-unite as they planned when they were teenagers, their hope for an escape to the wilds together seems more forlorn than ever.

Monster is running at the Seven Dials Playhouse, 1A Tower Street, London WC2H 9NP until Saturday 18th October