The Other Place: your audio described introduction
This is an audio introduction to our production of The Other Place, a new play written and directed by Alexander Zeldin with music by Yannis Philipakis.
These include information about the pre-show touch tour, some background to the play and descriptions of the set, costume and characters. They are available as an audio file, as a word document and in full on this web page for screen readers.
The production lasts about 1 hours and 20 minutes, with no interval.
Please note that this production contains loud music. It includes explicit language, themes of death, depictions of physical assault, disturbing sexual content, and graphic references to suicide that some may find distressing.
Click here for the transcript of the audio file as a Word docx
It is also available here on this page:
Some background
The National Theatre website describes the play like this: Two sisters reunite on the anniversary of the death of their father.
Their uncle has remodelled their family home, in an attempt at a fresh start. But one sister’s sudden reappearance threatens to shatter this fragile idyll as she demands justice for the pain she carries.
Amid the debris and the new extension, guilt, grief and greed battle it out in the family’s competing dreams of their future. When we are faced with the suffering of others, even those closest to us, can we look away?
Set, characters and costumes
There are six characters.
Issy is a white woman in her mid-twenties with dark hair pulled back in a low bun, some strands coming loose around her face. Issy has a contemporary, arty style: she wears a red Adidas hoodie with white stripes down the sleeves over a white t-shirt, and a gauzey skirt in turquoise patterned fabric over flared blue jeans and red Adidas trainers with white stripes. She has lots of silver rings, chipped blue nail varnish and dangly gold earrings with faces on them. Issy is tense, alert to the movements of others around her, often biting her lip as her attempt to join the conversation is cut off.
Annie, her older sister, is a white woman in her late twenties. She has an angular face with jaw-length light brown hair, parted in the centre and pushed back from her face. Her straight hair appears lank and greasy. Annie arrives wearing lots of layers: a grey zip-up waterproof top, cropped grey tracksuit bottoms, thick burgundy socks and battered white trainers. A white hoodie is tied around her waist and she is carrying a large rucksack on her back. Under her top, she wears a long-sleeved beige t-shirt with a low scooping neck over a black vest and pink sports bra. Annie can disconcert others by remaining still or silent, although her fidgeting hands suggest her internal agitation. She often puts her left hand in her trouser pocket – perhaps in an attempt to appear more relaxed than she feels.
The sisters’ uncle Chris is a slimly built white man of fifty, cleanshaven with short dark brown hair. He wears smart-casual clothes in sombre colours: a light grey cashmere sweater, navy slacks and maroon sneakers. He has a tense, contained presence. When Chris goes out, he puts on a heavy wool coat that gives him a severe, military look.
His partner Erica is a mixed-race woman of fifty with glowing brown skin. She has her hair in chin-length twists and wears subtle make up. Erica’s casual clothes are from expensive high street brands – a loose blue denim shirt, worn open over an orange vest, slightly cropped dark grey jeans and beige lace-up plimsolls. To sleep, she wears a light grey vest and satin pyjama bottoms. Erica is physically confident, moving quickly and decisively.
Erica’s son, Leni is fifteen, a non-binary trans masc teenager. Leni has light brown skin and short curly dark brown hair styled as a mullet, shaved shorter on the sides and longer on the top and back. They also have a slit shaved in one eyebrow. When the play opens, Leni is wearing a neat cotton shirt in two shades of navy blue with black cord trousers and white converses. They add a burgundy parka to go out. Later, they wear adidas tracksuit bottoms, a black, grey and white t- shirt and a grey zip-up jumper. Leni is an awkward teenager often found slouched on a chair or standing with hands buried in their pockets but always sensitive to the moods in the room.
A family friend, Terence, called Terry or Tez for short, has dirty blonde stringy hair hanging down to his collar. He’s tall and lean, almost gaunt, wearing a green khaki sports top with red stripes down the sleeves, knee-length shorts and blue flip flops. There’s a tattoo on the back of his right calf. Tez has a loose, relaxed physicality and likes dancing to techno and whenever he says Whaaa! he shakes out his hands.
The production uses the full extent of the Lyttleton’s very wide ‘letterbox’ shaped stage, placing a realistic kitchen and living room in the middle of the stage, but leaving the surrounding black floor and technical structure visible at the sides as a constant reminder that this is a fiction. The performers also come and go through the audience, using a set of steps to the left.
The stage is open as we take our seats. We are facing the kitchen and living room of a 1960s house that’s mid-renovation, with bare plasterboard walls, piles of boxes and bags, and temporary flooring held down by tape. This is Annie and Issy’s childhood home, now being extended by Chris and Erica. It’s on two levels, with a raised area across the back. The edge of the shallow step up to this raised area has been left open, revealing the steel deck staging, once again leaving a deliberate hole in the illusion.
At the back left-hand corner, there is a flight of stairs leading to the unseen upper rooms, with a small landing halfway up. To the left of the stairs, facing us, is the cellar door. In the corner formed by the stairs, there is a heap of bin bags and carrier bags full of clothes and books, and a blue tent in a bag. Further forward, on the left hand side of the lower level, a kitchen island of grey veined marble stands on a square of grey kitchen tiles. The island has a sink set into it facing the left, and on the other side, two high breakfast bar stools tucked underneath. The top is covered in domestic clutter – a cafetiere, food packets and papers.
Across the centre back of the space, large sliding glass doors – gleamingly new – open onto the deeply shadowed garden at the back. An old armchair with dingy upholstery that’s on wheels and can swivel around stands in front of the new doors.
In the rear right hand corner, there’s a small lobby area with a window on the righthand side, almost obscured by a stack of cardboard boxes piled up against the wall. This lobby leads via a glazed door to an unseen larder and the back door to the house. In front of the lobby, on the lower level, there’s a wooden dining table and six chairs, sitting on sheets of temporary floor protection, held in place by gaffa tape.
Characters coming and going between the kitchen-dining room and the house’s front entrance use a set of steps to the extreme left of the stage that lead down into the auditorium, and go out using a set of audience doors.
Hanging over the whole playing area there is a large lightbox which glows with the white of an overcast sky. Initially angled to face the audience, with the rear side lower than the front, it lights the kitchen. But as we discover, it can tilt so that it illuminates the rear of the stage. When it does so, it lights up the garden beyond the new sliding doors, and beyond that, the looming silhouettes of tall trees.