The Conor Baum Company at Brighton Open Air Theatre, August 2025

This Brighton Fringe Outstanding Theatre Award winning company is back, with the third in their trio of significant plays spanning thousands of years and sharing a common theme: families bound by buried trauma, domineering mothers, monstrous unseen men and blazing enraged daughters who will not be quiet.

It seems like no time at all since the Conor Baum Company was born and we’ve swiftly come to expect nothing but excellence from this accomplished team. And this show delivers all-round excellence.

Last summer, something happened. Sebastian is dead and grieving mother Violet clings to her version of him as her health fails, while his avenging angel cousin Catherine is coming – with the truth. Intense desperation permeates the play – desperation for a hearing, for saving face and preserving an image, and for money.

The sun setting over the green, exotic bird song and lush foliage set the scene in this tree-surrounded space, with Brighton’s crows and gulls picking up their cues overhead.

As Violet, Sharon Drain delivers a mesmerising performance as the fading matriarch, single minded, wealthy and proud, propped up by obsessive love. Her delivery of the exhausted and ultimately expendable sea turtle mother metaphor is queasily fascinating.

As Catherine, Isabella McCarthy Somerville slinks in, a fragile-seeming piece of steel, with mercurial flashes of sullen loathing, burning intent, and a final unstoppable spirit.

The play is bookended by two epic speeches by these two women whose very different stories of the late Sebastian are drawn out by the composed, still presence of Oliver Clayton’s youthful and sincere Doctor Cukrowicz – whose sweetness belies his dreadful intent.

The play’s second mother-son duo are a great complication. Deborah Kearne’s a grimly funny Mrs Holly, all pleasantries and social niceties restraining Jordan Southwell’s bullish tightly-wound George, as they circle Catherine, revealing themselves as equally intent on money – and silence.

Strong supporting work from Peta Taylor’s Miss Foxhill, Violet’s cosy, dependable rock, a conspiratorial confidante always ready, always there, and Jules Craig’s kindly, watchful, dutiful Sister Felicity, battered and abused by her charge.

The costume and set design are spot on,
those genteel indicators of hats, little gloves and handbags, tennis racquet and polite tailoring in a garden of greenery and Venus fly traps all creating the mask and shoring up the lies covering up the truth.

Night falls during the production, as the tale of searing heat and light unfolds, the stage lighting bringing up the white bone burning in the sky. Nothing will escape this light, finally.

If you don’t know the story, the sense of What HAPPENED? What did he DO? is so powerful, and the final moments so satisfying.

Baum’s direction delivers a pacey and enthralling psychological horror story and we need to know – what’s next from this key player in drama in the city?

Philippa Hammond
Sussex Playwrights Reviews