What a rich vein of form the Yard has found this year. After the undiluted triumph of an audacious reimagining of The Crucible comes this terrifically twitchy new play, intriguing, unsettling and occasionally frustrating, which grapples with America’s all-pervasive obsession with guns. Armadillo, let’s not forget, literally translates as “little armoured one”.
After a self-consciously fidgety start, all flickering lights and flashing video screens, writer Sarah Kosar and director Sara Joyce get down to business. And what business it is, as John (Mark Quartley) accidentally shoots his wife Sam (Michelle Fox) in the arm during a sex game and we start to hear about the abduction of 13-year-old Jessica, learning quickly that Sam herself was abducted at the same age, only to be rescued by a gun-bearing teacher in a supermarket car park.
Jessica’s kidnapping provokes all sorts of disturbed and disturbing memories in Sam, who likes to carry a simulacrum gun for reassurance and finds relief in acting out scenarios from her ordeal with her brother Scotty (Nima Taleghani). All three actors are impressively sure-footed but Fox offers a scintillating portrait of a woman who starts to doubt whether those who should love her the most fully believe in what she has suffered.
The work of both Kosar and Joyce fizzes with energy and pent-up rage and, as the characters play-shoot each other with water pistols and talk about family hunting trips, gives us constant sly reminders of the central role guns occupy in American culture.
Until June 22 (theyardtheatre.co.uk)
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