I didn’t know much about this play except that it had gotten fairly decent reviews, that it was Holly Hunter’s West End debut and that I was able to get seats that were normally £40 for £15. Fair enough.

The setting is rural Ireland’s Bog of Cats. Hunter is Hester Swane, a woman whose lover of fourteen years, and father of her child, abandons her to marry a younger woman. The story is told from dusk til dawn and slowly Hester’s uneasy and complicated past is revealed as she seeks to win her lover back or at the very least keep her daughter out of his hands.

The play started of very slowly. Or perhaps it started slowly for me because I was still trying to adjust to the Irish accent and in doing so missed the detail in the dialogue. For whatever reason I found myself drifting for the first 10-15 minutes, and apparently fascinated by Hunter’s neck. No it is not some strange fetish. I just found it unusual how her neck seemed many years older than her otherwise youthful appearance. Once I got into the swing of the accent the story suddenly became much more intriguing and I was soon drawn into the plight of Hester.

The play was at all times moving and whilst the overall tone was one of bleakness and inevitable tragedy, this was broken up nicely by moments of levity. For someone with a frame as small as Hunter’s she had an amazing presence on stage. Perhaps it was because she had an absolute lack of inhibition that she was able to produce a performance so powerful and enthralling (despite some slip-ups in the accent department). Definitely something to be seen.