Francesca Amewudah-Rivers delivers a phenomenal performance in Tender, a surreal queer horror romance at the Bush theatre in London, directed by Emily Aboud. The play, written by Eleanor Tindall, runs until 1 August and blends dark romance, haunted house tropes, and psychological horror.
Passion and haunting presence
Nadi Kemp-Sayfi returns as Ivy, while Amewudah-Rivers takes the role of Ash, a taut, sexy, and disturbed character. According to the review, Amewudah-Rivers is such a phenomenal presence that she eclipses everything else on stage, wringing every last drop of poetry from Tindall's script.
The two-hander, first performed in the theatre's smaller studio space two years ago, follows a dark romance between two women: one in a long-term relationship with a man, the other experimenting with women. Both are tormented in different ways.
Metaphors and unexplained phenomena
Alys Whitehead's set features a patterned back wall that ripples and rumbles with unexplained noise from Ash's flat, accompanied by fabulously antsy sound design by Ellie Isherwood. The home seems possessed by something undefined, reminiscent of the shade in Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper.
The hauntings could be a manifestation of male terror, inflicted on women who pay the price in deteriorating mental health. However, the metaphors are too abounding—including the eating of flesh and cutting of it—and though the surrealism is exciting, it does not quite add up. The blood on stage suggests violence, leading to suspicion that one character might be locked in an afterlife, though this goes against the logic of the central romance.
Coercive control and violence
Just as The Yellow Wallpaper features a controlling husband, Tender includes an abusive male character in Ash's ex-fiance Cas. Ivy's boyfriend, Max, increasingly displays coercively controlling behaviour, which he attempts to pass off as reasonable and caring. The strange phenomena in Ash's flat amount to nothing—the wallpaper is stripped with no reveal beyond. The flaw here is confusion in potentially clashing meanings, and the violence in Ash's past is strangely under-explained, though Cas's stalking of her feels real.
Powerful elements despite loose ends
Yet there are elements so powerful that the loose ends do not frustrate quite as much as they might. The movement is almost like dance in moments of sexual passion, and there is lovely lyricism in the characters' dual narration. Sometimes tender, it is also as slippery and visceral as raw meat. At 90 minutes, it is a meal not quite filling enough but every morsel delicious.
