A Good House review

Each of Jephta’s richly drawn characters is intriguingly flawed, and surprisingly relatable, despite their festering fears and resentments. Mimî M Khayisa is gripping as privileged, pretentious, fabulously frosty Bonolo, always ready to confront her neighbours over any perceived prejudice she detects, and frequently berating her husband Sihle for letting those micro-aggressions slide. But as the play goes on and escalating tensions begin to threaten the community’s stability, she must compromise fiercely held beliefs to protect her social position. 

As Sihle, Sifiso Mazibuko takes an opposite trajectory. He begins seemingly calm and contented, beatifically beaming in the face of his neighbour’s idiocy. But their ignorant judgements about the kind of people who would live in the shack soon prove too provoking, igniting eruptive anger. Olivia Darnley gives a brilliantly subtle performance as their white neighbour Lynette, projecting guileless sweetness, but hiding a secret depth of manipulative malice underneath, roping Bonolo and Sihle into her plot to have the shack-builders evicted for “the optics” of the situation.

The set by ULTZ suggests spacious, open-plan homes, elegantly conveying wealth and privilege. A glossy diamond of flooring is edged with ground-level lighting, furnished with neutral-toned modernist sofas and huge canvases of semi-abstract art. But in the shadows beyond, the shack remains visible. It grows bigger between scenes, sprouting rickety new extensions and developing increasingly homey touches – cheerfully painted window frames, a couple of pot plants – which not only suggest long-term habitation, but also humanise the invisible occupants we imagine to be living within.

As Jephta’s characters struggle to articulate their unease with the shack’s presence, the play grows into an incisive interrogation of ideas of ownership, gentrification and the complex intersections of class, race and the hostility that even the most outwardly accepting community can show to those whom they consider outsiders.

London, then at Bristol Old Vic, February 14-March 8