Jacqueline McKenzie and Mandy McElhinney. Photo by Daniel Boud.
Chaos versus order; the heart versus the head; science versus emotion. These are the themes running through Lucy Kirkwood’s ambitious new play Mosquitoes. At its heart is the relationship of two very different sisters, intellectually brilliant Alice (Jacqueline McKenzie) and her much maligned “epically thick” sister Jenny (Mandy McElhinney). Alice is working in Geneva, part of a team of physicists at the Large Hadron Collider that is searching for the Higgs Boson, the fabric of the universe and our very existence. Jenny lives in unlovely Luton, sells insurance and is suspicious of science, but believes her horoscope and any conspiracy theory that the internet has to offer. She is also the carer for their querulous and somewhat monstrous mother Karen (Annie Byron), whose once-brilliant scientific mind is being assailed by dementia.
Grieving her two year old daughter who contracted measles and died (because Jenny, who trusted in science enough to have an IVF baby but was too spooked by vaccination scares to have her immunised), Jenny and Karen turn up in Geneva, to stay with Alice and her nerdy son Luke (Charles Wu).
Clever Alice is not clever enough to understand Luke, who is insecure, positively hates living in Geneva and is on the outer with his peers. Here we have chaos. And much of it is very funny, because Kirkwood (Chimera, The Children) is great with witty dialogue and the dynamics of this dysfunctional family. Luke’s not quite relationship with Natalie (Nikita Waldron) is wonderfully observed, and enacted. “Stupid” Jenny has an emotional IQ that soars above her sister’s and she understands Luke and his problems in a way his mother never can.
Then there is the science, the order. How scientific discoveries are made, how they are reported, misunderstood by non-scientific minds and misrepresented in the media – from people shying away from life-saving vaccinations to the fear that the Hadron Collider experiments could result in a black hole and the end of life as we know it. How small and insignificant humans are in the cosmos.
These are big themes to knit together – the Hadron Collider experiment sort of mirrors the family’s emotional collisions – and Mosquitoes, although polished to perfection, is not always entirely successful in a cohesive sense. The family scenes, especially those with McElhinney and Wu are entirely believable and engrossing. Byron is marvellous as the unlovable and unsympathetic Karen, who is terrified of her own decay. McKenzie has less to work with as Alice, who, apart from a shockingly vitriolic scene towards the end of the play, is more two-dimensional, but the heart – the sibling rivalry – is wonderful to watch. The science, however, sometimes becomes a distraction, almost like a Ted talk that has been inserted into the script for our edification.
These pieces are given by Alice’s otherwise absent scientist husband (Jason Chong), who disappeared from her life (and Luke’s) years ago and is represented as an almost ghostly figure on stage until he comes forward to enlighten us on atomic theory and other scientific matters. “There are five ways in which the world could end,” he tells at the end of Act 1 and, while he has our complete attention, the information takes us away from the family dynamic. It is sometimes as if two plays are running in parallel. No doubt this is entirely possible, both in science and the universe as we know it, but as a lowly audience member I found it a little distracting here.
Nonetheless, there is much to like in the various elements of Mosquitoes. The stagecraft is fabulous (Jessica Charles directs), the sets (Elizabeth Gadsby) are starkly and elegantly spectacular and make good use of the Drama Theatre’s revolve, and the excellent lighting design comes courtesy of Nick Schlieper.
As ever, Kirkwood gives us plenty to think about, and this production is well worth seeing. It’s at the Drama Theatre until 18 May.
