Ugly Lies the Bone, Lyttelton Theatre, London: this tale of war injuries and virtual reality is frustratingly vague
Ugly Lies the Bone is an unappealing title for a play with a very appealing central character. But the story of Jess, a female war veteran returning from Afghanistan with severe burns and using virtual reality as a means of therapy, never achieves a coherent narrative.
The play by Lindsey Ferrentino, a hit off Broadway, is set in Titusville, proximitous to Nasa’s shuttle launch pad in Florida and now a ghost town of high unemployment and foreclosed homes. Jess (Kate Fleetwood) must not only cope with post traumatic stress disorder, but also a shattered community, while sister Kacie (Olivia Darnley) frantically scrabbles to collect the last few fragments of the American Dream. Their mother, who has dementia, is kept at bay for fear that she may be terrified of Jess’s disfiguring injuries or worse, may not recognise her at all.
This bleak prospect is only aggravated by the men in the story. Kacie’s boyfriend Kelvin (Kris Marshall) is an indolent manchild who bumptiously compares his leg injury to Jess’s chronic suffering. Jess’s hapless ex, Stevie (Ralf Little), has now married someone else but tries, ineptly, to rekindle the emotional side of their relationship.
So thank goodness, it seems, for the clinic which has created Jess’s perfect world and which she witnesses through a head set. “Modern casualties require a modern panacea,” instructs the (unseen) virtual reality designer (voiced by Buffy Davis, best known as Ambridge’s libidinous barmaid Jolene Perks). But the unfurling mountains over which Jess glides ultimately offers little comfort when the scars of war cut so deep. Is physical and emotional pain actually preferable to simulated pleasure?
Frustratingly, this and many other questions are never fully answered. What is the precise experience of Jess’s three tours of duties? What does it say about the role of women in the armed forces? Is America ultimately failing in its treatment of war veterans?
Ugly Lies the Bone scores highly in Luke Halls’s breathtaking video design, guiding Jess and the audience through lakes of glass and snow made of feathers which constantly evolve with a hypnotic beauty (audience members are invited to use a free immersive installation outside the auditorium). But you never grasp the exact point of this technological wizardry or how it really impacts on Jess's mental state. Above all, it hobbles the staging. The sizeable Lyttleton is perfect for the virtual reality scenes which are rendered on a large concave set, but the domestic encounters – intimate and often very subtle – are lost in the wide arena and rarely given enough dramatic pace by director Indhu Rubasingham.
The performances, however, are uniformly good. Marshall and Little, two actors best known for their work in TV comedy (My Family and The Royle Family respectively), give very real accounts of fractured masculinity, while the interaction between Fleetwood and Darnley is effective in delivering one of the most painfully truthful portraits of sibling relationships that I have seen in a long time.
Jess’s terrible injuries means that Fleetwood’s performance is physically restricted, but that adds to its emotional power.She makes Jess simultaneously cynical, frustrated and crucially rather hopeful. It’s just a shame that the play doesn’t give this complex character a proper resolution - or a proper story.
Ugly Lies the Bone is playing at the Lyttelton Theatre, National until June 6. Book your tickets at tickets.telegraph.co.uk or by calling: 0844 871 2118
