Blood Harmony review sombre three-hander mourns a lost mother – The Guardian

Anna is in her late mothers attic brandishing a book. It is called Grief and Grieving and she has two more copies in her bag. They are for her wayward sister Maia and kid sister Chloe, the one who stayed at home as a carer, hanging on while Anna forged a career abroad and Maia lived it up in the city.

None of them seems interested in the book. They dont need any lessons in grief. In Matthew Bulgos play, created with directors Jonnie Riordan and Jess Williams for ThickSkin, grieving is pretty much all they do. Having got the funeral over, they relive childhood memories, air old arguments and wallow in a state of inertia.

Feels like the beginning, says Chloe when the play is very nearly at an end. Perhaps it would have been a better place to start, because Blood Harmony is a play in which almost nothing happens.

How could it? Grief is an emotion that is backward looking. It is a denial of the present-tense movement on which drama thrives. It is a state to be experienced, not a dilemma to be resolved. Bulgo tries to spice things up with a standard-issue pregnancy plot and some interplay about the women being at a turning point in their lives, but it is not enough to bring any sense of urgency.

Tellingly, the songs scattered through the show do nothing to forward the plot. There isnt a plot to forward. Instead, they strike an elegiac note and luxuriate in it. Written by indie folksters the Staves, they are pretty and melodic and, with the harmonic arrangements of Kate Marlais, strikingly sung by actors Eve De Leon Allen, Keshini Misha and Philippa Hogg.

The three performers fight their corners with feeling: De Leon Allens sweet-natured Chloe contrasting with the hedonism of Mishas Maia and the narcissism of Hoggs Anna. They are attractive performances but the show really finds its theatrical life when they turn the struts of Hayley Grindles attic set into a climbing frame and stand silhouetted against the strip lights concealed by lighting designer Charly Dunford. Grief might be no friend of drama, but in moments like these, it is not bad for visual poetry.

At the Lowry, Salford, until 18 June. Then touring until 28 August.

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Blood Harmony review sombre three-hander mourns a lost mother - The Guardian