Simon Ward reviews The Other Room at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre

Here | For 2026 is a season of four shows over five weeks running at the Lion and Unicorn designed to showcase promising new work. Sarah Rickman’s brilliantly written and almost unbearably moving new play certainly fits that description. Rickman, who also plays Grace, has created a masterful exploration of the reality of trying to hold on to life, while dealing with the day-to-day necessities of death. Grace’s husband, Chris, is indeed dying. He is the occupant of ‘the other room’. The piece cleverly conveys the power that a person can wield, even confined to bed and barely able to catch their breath. We never see Chris but we are acutely aware of his wants and needs. His presence permeates the play.

And it is at Chris’s instigation that carer Themba (Tolu Kingba) enters Grace’s life. Utterly unexpected, she at first insists that his services are not required. But if Chris wants it, she is powerless to disagree. And Themba’s quiet professionalism and commitment to the job make him impossible to dislike. It turns out that it does actually help to have someone else around, even just to talk over how tough things are. Director Bellaray Bertrand-Webb carefully choreographs the two as they skirt around each other, trying to figure each other out, while they are both intent on looking after Chris. It is a classic triangle, perhaps, but subtly and powerfully managed here.

Production values are incredibly high – the set is a detailed vision of Grace and Chris’s kitchen, cluttered with all the paraphernalia of family life, but one which is increasingly overwhelmed by the medical equipment which Chris needs. The sound and lighting by EJ Walker is excellent, capturing the jarring clashes between the warm glow of the home to the glare of flashing blue lights and back again. One of the ways Chris makes his presence felt is by his heartbreakingly ragged breathing on a kind of baby monitor. Every now and then he manages to say a few words, usually with an awkward demand. There are moments, too, when a few items of laundry can poignantly conjure up the fragile body suffering a few yards away.

As Grace and Themba form an ever-closer bond – she encourages him to follow his dream of further study, he allows her to let off some of the pent-up frustration that she has been hiding – the sense that it is necessarily finite hangs in the air. There will come a time when Chris is no longer around, and so Themba will no longer be around. Chris’s death will be a kind of double bereavement for Grace. Absurd, but truly human and understandable. Living with emotions so close to the surface as death is hovering is unbelievably hard. Of course Chris is suffering, but he seems to have gained a kind of clarity because he knows his time is so limited. Themba, likewise, is empathetic but at the end of the day he is a professional with a job to do. Grace needs to find her own path, and, in the end, we dare to believe that she may do so.

The Other Room is running at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre, 42-44 Gaisford St, London NW5 2ED until Saturday 24th October