by Robyn Ong

LONDON – In the Royal Court Theatre’s newest offering, directed by Vicky Featherstone, Michael Wynne’s Cuckoo juxtaposes the ordinary lives of four generations of women with an inescapable sense of existential doom, exploring themes of digital alienation and intergenerational discontent.

Cuckoo is at its heart a kitchen sink drama, with most of the action taking place in widowed grandmother Doreen’s Birkenhead living room, her actual kitchen just adjacent. The play opens with Doreen sitting round the dining table with her two grown-up daughters, Carmel and Sarah, and Carmel’s daughter Megyn, the perfect picture of domestic bliss—except for the fact that each of them is on their phone. For longer than is perhaps comfortable, the room is completely silent, save for the occasional blip of a message notification and a chuckle here and there as they send each other memes or funny videos. It’s a scene we might recognise a little too well from our own family living rooms, and whilst funny and familiar, for a moment I wondered if we were simply going to be told that too much time on our phones is bad for us.

But while Michael Wynne’s play certainly doesn’t shy away from exploring the alienation and isolation that come hand-in-hand with the digital age, the narrative it weaves is much stranger and more interesting than a well-worn cautionary tale. Everything kicks off when Megyn, fearful and angry, sequesters herself in her grandmother’s bedroom offstage, refusing to come out for weeks on end and only communicating with her family through text.

Cuckoo succeeds most as a portrayal of the lingering sense of dread that surrounds so much of our modern lives. Though billed as a dark comedy, the play is pervaded by a constant sense of impending doom, of something being just slightly off-kilter: Sarah’s primary school students threaten each other with violence; Carmel finds herself inexplicably afraid, alone in her own house one night. Throughout the play the pinging of phones might herald anything as innocuous as Doreen making a new online sale to breaking news of a horrible accident halfway across the globe, and the characters go from discussing the minutiae of their lives to climate change and the end of the world as we know it all in the same breath.

The play’s resolution is a decidedly understated one, as the root cause of Megyn’s troubles is never specifically pinpointed, and we’re not sure where exactly the characters will end up when the curtain drops. Cuckoo seems more concerned with capturing a feeling than with wrapping up its loose ends entirely, which might cause some narrative frustration, but when it works it absolutely works. Neither the audience nor the characters know why exactly Megyn has retreated to Doreen’s bedroom, but in a way it doesn’t matter—with everything as uncertain as it is, the play seems to say, who among us hasn’t been tempted to withdraw from life, to crawl back and disappear under their parents’ (or grandparent’s, in this case) duvet, where the world doesn’t feel quite so big?

Still, if the ending of the play is ambiguous, the characterisations and quality of the performances certainly aren’t. Each woman is sympathetically drawn, from Michelle Butterly’s acerbic Boots employee Carmel and her no-nonsense approach to living and motherhood, to Jodie McNee’s eminently kind schoolteacher Sarah and her romantic troubles with new boyfriend Simon (who, being a dentist, must have “lovely teeth”, as Doreen likes to say). Sue Jenkins as Doreen, too, delights as she sells her old possessions online for spare change, and struggles to hide her blossoming dating life from her adult daughters. Their dialogue and little snipes at one another perfectly convey that strange mix of exasperation, humour, nastiness, and affection that only family can really achieve. Emma Harrison, making her professional debut, is necessarily offstage for most of the play, but manages even so to make something truly haunting out of Megyn and her plight.

The set design is commendable as well, immersing the audience in the intimate clutter and bustle of Doreen’s ordinary, somewhat old-fashioned living room across the span of several weeks. And, without spoiling too much, our sole glimpse of Doreen’s bedroom in the final scene of the play feels at once cathartic and constricting, a clever touch given the room’s narrative significance as Megyn’s “cuckoo nest”.

Even with its somewhat subdued resolution, Cuckoo is nevertheless an evocative, thought-provoking piece, buoyed by strong performances and a consistently intriguing central premise. It is well worth the watch and, at the very least, audiences will feel a little twinge of guilt before checking their phones again on the way out.

Photo Credit: Manuel Harlan 

Cuckoo plays from 6th July to 19th August 2023 at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Downstairs. Tickets and more information available here