Otherland, Almeida Theatre review - a vivid, beautifully written take on the trans experience

“Who’d be a woman?... Who in their right mind would choose all that?” The question comes towards the end of a conversation where two former lovers are comparing notes on their tumultuous recent past.

One of them, Jo, has just had a baby. The other, Harry, has taken hormones to transition from being a man to being a woman. In answer to the question, Harry replies, “No-one does though, do they? No-one chooses… Some of us just come the long way round.”

The humorous understatement of the exchange is typical of a script that’s as fresh as a sea breeze and as lyrical as birdsong. Playwright Chris Bush, who entranced audiences at the National Theatre in 2023 with her story of three generations on a Sheffield housing estate, Standing at the Sky’s Edge, has now written a witty, heart-breaking play about the trans experience. She has asserted that, “It is absolutely, fundamentally not autobiography,” even though, like Harry, she came out as a trans woman after her 30^th birthday towards the end of a long-term relationship. Whatever your take, it’s undeniable that the script goes far beyond the trans experience to ask profound questions about how any of us deal with the life changes served up by the ageing process and hormones.

If you think that sounds heavy, then think again. Ann Yee’s vibrant, joyful production is an often laughter-filled odyssey through the ways that Harry and her wife Jo assert themselves when their relationship splinters. We begin when they’re being serenaded at their wedding, but quickly the music takes on a plangent, minor lilt as they stand in their flat haggling over the division of CDs and Le Creusets. Though Harry’s life is about to go through more dramatic change, the script is every bit as fascinated with Jo who goes on a wild clubbing spree, gets a bad tattoo, and finds new love as she’s hiking the Inca Trail in Peru.

The trans actor, model and writer Fizz Sinclair plays Harry with a dignified sensitivity that speaks every bit as loudly as her words do. There’s nothing polemical about the case she makes for wanting to be a woman – in a way she’s as puzzled by her desire to transition as everyone else. Yet it’s the quietness of her conviction that this is the only way that proves so powerful, not least in the scenes where her mother heavy-handedly suggests that she become a man again for a couple of days to use her old passport and attend a family wedding. Jackie Clune is very funny as a benign maternal monster, but we feel aghast at her insensitivity as Harry struggles shyly to explain that her new identity isn’t something that can be compromised by the occasional outfit change.As Jo, Jade Anouka is a force of nature, ebullient and bloody-minded as she throws herself through an obstacle course of experiences to cope with her relationship breakdown. Throughout the play her story – like Harry’s – is narrated by a chorus of free-spirited women, who revel in the ups and downs and occasional absurdities of what they see before them. Often they break into songs composed and directed by Jennifer Whyte, rapturously accompanied by Catrin Meek on the harp and Gabriella Swallow on the cello. In the spoken interludes, we discover that Jo cannot cope with Harry’s sex change despite mainly fancying women, though her own life seems to change just as dramatically when her new girlfriend Gabby asks her to carry her egg to have a baby.

The second half of the play becomes more structurally ambitious when we find ourselves in two different time zones. Harry has become a sea monster, washed up to be examined by eighteenth century scientists (in a moment that echoes Danny Boyle's staging of Frankenstein). Jo has become a futuristic robotic gestating machine whose baby bump is a shining orb. It’s a risky dramatic shift, but it works because both “transformations” tie into themes already established in the play; Harry is an expert in marine life and Jo’s partner Gabby loves dancing at robotic discos. What this section powerfully conveys is how profoundly alienated both feel from the rest of the world by the new shapes of their bodies. The cis woman carrying an egg that’s not her own – who’s accepted by society – is every bit as challenged as the trans. Both experience the fear and loneliness of metamorphosis even as they embrace its end result.  

Bush has spent almost a decade working on Otherland, and it’s fair to say the result – like a lot of good writing – succeeds in making very specific experiences feel powerfully universal. The visceral emotion, the poetry and the wry humour about the quirks of humanity sweep you through a story that’s as heart-breaking as it’s funny. On Fly Davis’s dynamic spiral set, there’s never any feeling of time dragging – just a fascination with where each character’s story is taking them. This latest triumph for Bush seals her reputation as a playwright who’s as bold as she's compelling.

• Otherland is at the Almeida til March 15
• More theatre reviews on theartsdesk