What makes this play special is the exact and oddball nature of the writing and the amazing delivery by the three actors who are word perfect in a complex script.  We are immersed in the old woman’s world and even that of her cat Sally whom she forgets to feed and who has to fend for herself via an open window and a balcony leap.  Both Innocenti and Newton will mimic the actions of the cat. 

The energy of all three actors is eye boggling as the story is delivered with banter type lines, sparking off each other.  There is a fun ballet sequence in the dark.  Sinister music heralds the entrance of the Debt Collector.  In the woman’s flat, her phone rings repeatedly and she never answers it.  Roxy Cook’s play may be absurdist but I felt the menace of the ever ringing phone, and, worse the eventual ringing at the doorbell.

I was starting to pale towards the end of the first act but things livened at the very beginning of the second act, which is six months later and December, into a roller coaster of life-changing events. 

The play can be seen as a moral story on the inequity of capitalism but the author’s summary in a late scene is this, “You see Russia isn’t one of these countries that holds you by the hand.

It throws you in at the deep end like a father teaching his son to swim

Says          Go on, show me what you’ve got, fight for yourself because no-one else will.”