Shaky Isles Theatre can claim to be the leading New Zealand theatre company based in London. They have been presenting readings and stagings of New Zealand plays in some of the city’s Fringe venues since 2006.

They have chosen to stage Gary Henderson’s Skin Tight as their main production of this year, performed by Shaky Isles’ founder Emma Deakin, and company member Samuel Webster, at the Pleasance Theatre, a black box studio theatre in Islington. Ex-pat New Zealander Stella Duffy, best known for her novels, directs, having also previously directed Kikia te Poa and ‘Precious Things’ for Shaky Isles.

I first saw Gary Henderson’s moving theatrical response to Denis Glover’s poem ‘The Magpies’ in the touring production featuring Jed Brophy and Larissa Matheson. Their performances – intense both physically and emotionally – left such a lasting impression that it would perhaps be unfair to compare any new revival with, especially given the rose-tinting of memory.

Henderson’s script is aging very well, helped by the fact that it’s laden with remembrances of a couple’s past in 1940s Canterbury, rather than a contemporary reality. We see Elizabeth (Emma Deakin) and Tom (Samuel Webster) in the prime of life – as they see each other – and it’s only gradually that we begin to realise the depth of their mutual passion relates to a much longer-term relationship than the characters’ apparent physical age might have initially led us to believe.

Stella Duffy’s appropriately sparse production places a third performer onstage throughout: cellist Katie Brayben underscores sections of the text, adding tension to the sections of boisterous physical grappling between the lovers. Brayben is also implied as an onstage presence of the couple’s absent daughter Kitty, and also interacted with directly as a woman Tom recalls flirting with.

These direct interactions slightly muddy the internal conventions of the piece in my opinion – we’re experiencing the intimate, subjective reality of a couple; seeing them through each other’s eyes, and three’s a crowd in that equation. But Brayben feeds strong focus into the piece throughout, making her a sympathetic onstage presence.

Emma Deakin is an emotionally generous Elizabeth; playful and sincere, easily arousing audience sympathies. The youthful vigour of her performance, while tempered by calculating guile as she plays with her lover’s vulnerabilities, is so compelling that it outweighs the gravitas that we might also expect considering the character’s real age and life experience.

Samuel Webster’s Tom is a good match for her physical sparrings, Webster matching Deakin’s emotional transparency as the lovers clash, confide and just about seem ready to consume each other in moments of believable erotic chemistry. Webster has a pronounced Northern English accent, which bothered me at first, in this very New Zealand piece. The character of Tom has known Elizabeth since their schooldays, so the accent seems to jar within the reality of the play – particularly when it so clearly contrasts with Deakin’s accent. It did set me thinking about the rural earthiness of the piece, and how this could be compared to fellow Northerner D H Lawrence’s earthy sensuality of tone… but I doubt that was the intention! 

Director Stella Duffy has facilitated an appropriate intensity between the performers. Given the awful sightlines in the theatre for any action happening on the floor, she has wisely kept most of the physical grapplings between the lovers up off the floor, against walls, and even hanging from a ceiling beam at one point. The physical passage where a knife becomes involved between the lovers certainly amps up the intensity of their interactions – the knife edge of love and pain. A bucket of water is repeatedly engaged in the action – water flicked and spat within conflicts, water wiping away tears, and water as the medium for a physical farewell of a lover’s body in the play’s poignant final scene.

This production avoids both the nudity and the final appearance of the elderly Tom, seen without the rose-tinting of Elizabeth’s perceptions of him. I presume are both in the script – they have certainly been features of other productions – and the impact of the play’s denouement is lessened as a result.

But the emotional intensity achieved by the actors within the climactic moments of the piece certainly honours the story, and the work’s distinctive New Zealandness of tone and physical directness is sure to prompt a few homesick pangs for New Zealanders in the audience on a dark London evening.
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Skin Tight is as passionate, confusing and intimate as any relationship.  Add in violent, masochistic and deeply tender and you have the relationship between Elizabeth and Tom, who have survived a world war, infidelity, parental disapproval and disappointing offspring.  But only just. 

Played energetically by Emma Deakin and Samuel Webster, their relationship is strained to say the least.  As they argue and fight over times past, I begin to wonder why they are together at all.  It’s like overhearing your flatmates arguing when they’re drunk.  Every old grievance comes back up to be picked over anew and fuel resentment.

I am hooked: it is the proverbial car crash; I can’t look away.  Because yes, I too have argued drunk and yes, I know that history can accumulate in any relationship.  But as they fling each other round the room, one minute play fighting like randy adolescents, the next rushing each other at full force, their relationship starts to change.  Somewhere between reminiscing about the Canterbury Plains (enough to make any Kiwi girl living in London homesick, even if done in an English accent) and doing dangerous, sexy things with knives, tenderness starts to develop.  Subtle at first amongst the power play and boob grabbing, it grows to heart-breaking proportions until the bitter sweet end.

The set is simple and, along with a live cello player, makes for a soothing backdrop against the disharmony of the action.   The direction feels straightforward and natural allowing for the actors to tell/show the story.  However some of the action on ground level is lost, although by the sounds of heavy breathing I think I know what’s going on, and crane my neck all the more to try to see! 

Deakin is disarming as the feisty Elizabeth and Webster comes into his own in the final scene, displaying a stoic vulnerability that moves me to tears. 

All human relationships are complex, and none more so then the relationship between men and women.  Skin Tight shows just one relationship, and a thousand complexities.
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