When I think of ‘tragicomedy’ in student theatre I always expect it to swing towards one pole (the comedy) over the other. Laughter, for students both onstage and in the audience, is easier to reach for than tears. But Tom Barry’s direction of You Got Older goes the other way. The humour is there by all means – but for the most part, this is a bleak, moving examination of time and the sombre path towards death we are all, invariably, at different points along.

Clare Barron’s hit play from 2014 has been shipped from the U.S. and deftly unpacked in the Playroom in only its second(!) British production. Inspired by Barron’s own life, ‘Mae’ (Audrey Hammer) moves back home to Washington state to care for her cancer-stricken father (Sky Stobart). She’s already lost her mother to the disease: the family’s gene pool is admittedly already a little fraught, with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s already having claimed several members. Scenes showing Mae’s personal and family crises are interspersed with a recurring sexual fantasy about a Cowboy (Martha Alexander). From the synopsis I expected this to be milked for laughs, but these scenes go from tender to downright menacing. For the hard-headed Mae, the Cowboy is a refraction of her deepest neuroses: mortality, security, loss of control – and a fascination with being raped. 

“There’s some deep, difficult subject matter in this play […] it’s gross, but it’s engrossing”

Yup. You read that right. There’s some deep, difficult subject matter in this play, expertly tackled by Barry and his cast. Discussions about sucking dick, struggling to climax, eating toenails, and sexual attraction to pus, litter the dialogue. It’s frank, but never once comes off as jarring or awkward. At one point, Hammer literally eats a beard hair from her date (Hugo Aaronson) to satisfy a fetish (“I just love the texture!”). The cast does a fantastic job of selling this; the direction and intimacy co-ordination (Millie Jeffrey) are sensitive and mature. It’s gross, but it’s engrossing.

Sky Stobart does an extraordinary amount of legwork portraying ‘Dad’, in what is a supremely moving performance. It must be difficult for a female fresher to portray a dying 62-year-old American man, but Stobart excels. Her eyes glazy, she keeps a majestic, stoic face though we see the character’s nervousness in her twitching neck pulse. When she shuffles on for her final scene (I was lucky enough to sit inches away), unbearably vulnerable, scrunching her face with tears, her voice breaking, struggling to announce that the end was finally in sight for Dad – it sells the sucker-punch of a finale. What a bold, imaginative casting choice – and a fantastic portrayal.

“Sky Stobart does an extraordinary amount of legwork”

Hammer, meanwhile, is excellent at representing Mae’s neuroses. She’s wry and funny, but also irritable, high-maintenance, and really quite unknowable to those around her; those Cowboy scenes are the audience’s only way in to a complex, frustrating mind. Entering partway through, Mae’s siblings (Rachel Byrne, Alexander Payton, Madeleine Whitmore) are a welcome relief and their kooky dynamics roll off each other wonderfully as they crowd around their father’s hospital bed. Stobart’s stiff calmness, with Dad feeling isolated from his family, is all the more poignant for it.

The set is sparse and contained, deliberately so. A single bed, surrounded by plant pots and greenery, cleverly doubles for Mae’s room, Dad’s hospital bed, a spot outdoors – even a bar where Mae meets a hook-up. Jasper Harris’s sound design is skilful and brilliantly mixed, transporting us to each location by filling the background with constant, subtle noises that take us from the woods to the hospital ward.

“This is challenging stuff for Camdram to stage”

This is challenging stuff for Camdram to stage – there’s the accents, capturing the Northwest Pacific setting, and then the bumpy themes. You Got Older is fascinated by bodily difference, brought to life in Beanie Wardaugh’s astounding make-up design. The rash on Hammer’s back, and lesions on Alexander’s chest, are jaw-droppingly lifelike. Just centimetres from Stobart, I was still scrunching my face to be sure her neck lumps were, in fact, the work of an artist.

The lighting, by Anna Gungaloo, is softly complex and effective at signalling transitions (there are only about two blackouts; sudden changes in colour are what move the scenes along). The American accents are admirable, though patchy in parts, and some have a tendency to slip or inhibit the actor’s delivery; others, like Stobart’s and Rachel Byrne’s (playing Hannah), are stronger and more consistent.

That nefarious door in the Playroom corner has thwarted many a director’s hopes for seamless transitions. Inevitably, when there are so few blackouts, entrances and exits become a little bottlenecked - but for the most part the action flows quickly and smoothly. This a coarse gem of a production; an offbeat play, minimally staged and well-suited to the Playroom, but standing out as something special. Like Stobart in her final scene, you just might find yourself choking up.

‘You Got Older’ is showing at the Corpus Playroom from Tuesday 4 until Saturday 8 February, at 7pm.