Our New Girl – can anyone take back control in a fraught household with evil overtones and questionable parenting (Lyric Theatre until Sunday 4 May)

The first character on stage is a young boy. The view of the trees out the sloped window in the kitchen suggests that it’s late at night. Silently Daniel gathers the apparatus required to disfigure himself. It’s a chilling start to a house occupied by traumatised people.

One of the joys of Nancy Harris’s incredibly dark play Our New Girl is that the badge of ‘most evil character’ is constantly on the move. (As is the badge of ‘would most like to strangle’.) After a long gap, Hazel is pregnant with her second child. A corporate lawyer, she was on her way to becoming a partner. But she now fills her days importing and failing to distribute bottles of Sicilian olive oil.

Her husband Richard reckons she isn’t coping. But he’s not often home to help. Instead, the talented plastic surgeon with a messiah complex performs cosmetic work in London to subsidise his jetting around war zones and natural disasters to help address other people’s injuries and concerns. His attention is diverted from what’s happening at home.

Into this mix comes Annie, an agency nanny from a rural background in Sligo. Her arrival is unexpected – “I do not need a nanny” – but after a bumpy start, the ‘new girl’ begins to bring a semblance of order to the precarious household.

It’s been a good week in Northern Ireland theatre for kitchen sets. Maree Kearns’s sleek cupboards and marbled island unit (with an overhanging breakfast bar that Daniel can hide under to eavesdrop on adult conversations) beautifully serves the drama. Sarah Jane Shiels uses a neat camera flash technique to blind the audience during the rapid scene changes. Garth McConaghie’s distressed sound effects add to the creepiness. It’s not often that such unsettling theatre reaches stages in Belfast: the only comparable examples that come to mind are Tinderbox’s staging of Jimmy McAleavey’s Unhome in 2014 and Martin McDonagh’s nightmare-inducing The Pillowman (Prime Cut in 2024, and Decadent Theatre in 2015).

Everyone is on edge. The only time director Rhiann Jeffrey allows the characters to dial back their intensity is in advance of another pivotal point when someone will snap and the most villainous league will gain a new top player. Some of these recurring instant mood shifts worked better than others on opening night, but the cast’s tremendous sense of timing during the dialogue in other scenes that are less fractious (but never happy) suggest that this will easily bed in during the run.

In the programme notes, the Lyric’s Executive Producer Jimmy Fay comments that “there’s something sinister at the heart of this sanctuary”. Secrets, neglect, violence, and exploitation. The child shoots with a Nerf gun. His father shoots with an expensive camera, capturing the disfiguration of his overseas patients. The nanny has more baggage than would fit in her suitcase.

Lisa Dwyer Hogg is captivating as the fraught and sometime forlorn Hazel. Jeanne Nicole Ní Áinle reveals Annie to be firm and organised before ulterior motives emerge. Adrenaline junkie Richard is played by Mark Huberman. His vocation means he’s often absent from the stage, but when he’s there he reeks superiority and his ability to gaslight Hazel is terrifying. On opening night Canice Doran stole scenes with his portrayal of troubled Daniel. He’s fine actor who captures the boldness of his character and doesn’t flinch when the kitchen gets heated. (The role of Daniel is shared with Milo Payne.)

Harris demands that the audience constantly reevaluate their judgement – and it’s impossible not to choose sides and harshly judge these characters – of Hazel, Richard, Anne and Daniel. Is Hazel a trophy wife? Is she highly strung or depressed or both? Is Richard exploiting his patients to stroke his own ego? Are either of them good parents? How much of Daniel’s poor behaviour is shaped by the nurture provided in his agitated home, and how much is down to his human nature? Is Annie ever a neutral influence as nanny?

Without flagging up any major spoilers, the ending leaves me wondering what happens next. David Ireland would have left a pool of blood seeping into the parquet floor. Harris, in contrast, is happy to give a hint that one character may begin to wrestle back control of their situation. Jeffrey has fashioned ominous and brooding performances from a cast who don’t hold back from exploiting the overwhelming sense of menace that runs through Harris’s script. Our New Girl continues its run of horror on stage at the Lyric Theatre until Sunday 4 May.

Photo credit: Carrie Davenport

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