THE GUEST

Omnibus Theatre

★★★★★

“powerful, provocative, and resonant”

Behind the ivy-covered walls of their quaint English cottage, Ricky and Joe – a middle-aged couple – live a quiet life, enjoying the fruits of their labour, both tangible and intangible. Their days are filled with gardening and tender conversations, the sort of domestic tranquillity earned over years of shared love and quiet perseverance.

But the rhythm of their peaceful life shifts the moment a stranger crosses their threshold.

The Guest is a poignant and timely stage production that echoes the England of today – an England grappling with the escalating realities of climate change, where each day seems hotter than the last. “Hot, isn’t it?” they mutter to each other. “Forty-one… nearly forty-two, they said.” The search for shade has become an impossible task, even under the once-reliable vines in their garden.

Into this sweltering, shifting landscape (brought to life with Christianna Mason’s simple, yet effective set design and enhanced by Imogen Senter’s intense lighting) walks Hannah, a young mother newly arrived in the country, portrayed with haunting depth by Erica Tavares-Kouassi. Initially asking only for a glass of water, Hannah’s brief visit becomes a daily presence, and soon, tensions begin to rise. Conversations morph into confrontations. Small talk spirals into debates, and eventually into shouting matches, revealing the deeply embedded fears, misunderstandings, and prejudices lurking just beneath the surface of civility.

Tavares-Kouassi’s performance is nothing short of extraordinary, capturing the emotional weight of the immigrant experience – from the hopes and hardships of arrival to the struggle for recognition and belonging in a place that feels simultaneously foreign and familiar.

Stephanie Jacob (who also wrote the play) as Ricky and Graham Turner as Joe deliver equally compelling performances driven by Lucy Richardson’s skilful direction. They embody the emotional complexity of those witnessing change from within the comfort of their long-established routines. Through them, we feel the creeping uncertainty of a world that no longer feels predictable, the unease that comes with confronting the unknown, and the quiet panic of being asked to leave the safety of the familiar “nest.”

The Guest is more than a play – it is a mirror held up to our society. It tackles bigotry, xenophobia, and the fear of the “other” with nuance and grace. The script is beautifully written, deeply human, and painfully relevant. In a world that grows more divided by the day, it reminds us that beneath our differences lies a shared need – for connection, for compassion, for home.

This is a must-see production: powerful, provocative, and resonant. It doesn’t just ask us to watch – it asks us to feel, to reflect, and perhaps, to change.

THE GUEST

Omnibus Theatre

Reviewed on 10th April 2025

by Beatrice Morandi

Photography by Héctor Manchego

Previously reviewed at this venue:

VANYA IS ALIVE | ★★★★ | February 2025

THE ICE AT THE END OF THE WORLD | ★★★★ | September 2024

MY LIFE AS A COWBOY | ★★★ | August 2024

HASBIAN | ★★★★ | June 2024

COMPOSITOR E | ★★★ | September 2023

THE GUEST

★★★★★

“heaps of honesty and bone-dry comedy”

I feel a little panic entering a theatre for a one-person play to find a seemingly basic set design. My natural inclination is to want as much distraction from the solitariness of the person on stage as possible – multiple pieces of furniture to move around on, lots of little props to play with, all so we can avoid eye contact and the general intensity that comes from silently praying that this one person will remember their seventy five minute monologue. In this case, the set is a curved white wall with various white blocks, all overlaid by a partial map, and that’s all. Not much of a give-away and certainly not much in the way of distraction.

But as it transpires, there’s no need. Fifteen-year old Rory (Gemma Barnett) saunters on stage and begins talking so casually, she might have been mid-conversation with an old friend. She starts at the end – in a helicopter flying over the North Pole with her dad’s ashes and her mum sobbing – and then continues on to the beginning – a completely commonplace death (a hit-and-run) of a nice and outwardly ordinary Geography teacher, who also happens to be Rory’s dad. Thereafter unfolds the journey from funeral to helicopter.

There is a whole lot of room in this plotline for saccharine catharsis and maudlin sentiment, but Tatty Hennessy’s writing is so perfectly British, deftly avoiding the more obvious route of overly stated loss with heaps of honesty and bone-dry comedy. Lucy Jane Atkinson’s direction sees Barnett deliver the entire play with impossible ease. She repeatedly teeters on the edge of mourning relief and repeatedly pulls back, making the few moments of emotional exposure all the more poignant. The script is also sneakily quite educational; I’ve now got a whole bank of fun facts about the north pole- my favourite involves a chisel made of poo.

Christianna Mason’s design is clean and simple – the camouflaged blocks house the few props used, as well as doubling as beds and chairs when required. But that’s all. And in fact, any more would have felt superfluous and distracting. The sound (Mark Sutcliffe) and lighting (Lucy Adams) follow suit, appearing sparingly and to great effect.

I feel it requires a mention that A Hundred Words for Snow is a story about an adventurous teenage girl, produced by a near-entirely female cast and crew, which is rare on both counts. And if this play is anything to go by, it should happen all the time because it appears to lead to roaring success.

Reviewed by Miriam Sallon

Photography by Nick Rutter

THE GUEST

Omnibus Theatre

★★★★★

“powerful, provocative, and resonant”

THE GUEST

Omnibus Theatre

Reviewed on 10th April 2025

by Beatrice Morandi

Photography by Héctor Manchego

Previously reviewed at this venue:

THE GUEST

THE GUEST

THE GUEST

Trafalgar Studios

Reviewed – 7th March 2019

★★★★★

“heaps of honesty and bone-dry comedy”

Reviewed by Miriam Sallon

Photography by Nick Rutter

A Hundred Words for Snow

Trafalgar Studios until March 30th

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue: