By Aline Mahrud

WORTH A LOOK?: ***

WHEN? Saturday 21 February, runs through 15 March 2025 RUNTIME: 150 minutes (including a 20-minute interval)

The best bit of this unusual story is trans character Harry finding solace on the hill in Greenwich Park straddling the meridian and appreciating a line that only exists because someone says it does.

• Read on for reasons including how Otherland feels overthought rather than fresh out of the box

It’s a hugely relatable idea in a play of 2 halves after the 1st of which we are left with 2 central female characters facing different different dilemmas about their body.

Harry is becoming trans and trying to reclaim her own body while former wife Jo has found a new female partner and feels like a robot after becoming pregnant to please her.

Author Chris Bush (Standing At The Sky’s Edge, National) is writing about the break up of couple Jo and Harry and the people they want to become.

She explains in the programme that she resisted the idea of drawing on her own experience and writing ‘the big trans play’ for a long time but after the success of the 5* Standing At The Sky’s Edge felt drawn to come back to an idea that had been germinating for years.

Anouka (COCK, Ambassadors Theatre) is a hugely charismatic performer, won our 2016 Best Theatre Actress monsta and throws herself into the ‘Beyonce in hiking boots’ section of the show where she meets her new wife while mountain hiking in Peru and it’s perhaps unfortunate that, while her lesbian life is full of fun and adventure, Sinclair’s Harry is having a rather 1-note and wooden experience contemplating her transition.

Jackie Clune (Just For One Day, Old Vic) pops up as Harry’s mum underlining the difficulties of trans people obtaining passports and draws gasps from this sympathetic audience with her callous micro-aggressions as she suggests her daughter foregoes living as a woman to draw less attention at a family gathering.

Unfortunately, the second half of this play deploys a dramatic shift in tone which appears to only serve rather clumsily as an attempt to underline and highlight ideas which had already been understood by the end of the much better 1st act.

Director Ann Yee (Next To Normal, Donmar Warehouse) resorts too easily to jarring musical interludes which appears to serve only as a heavy-handed attempt to remind of the author’s biggest success rather than serve the exploration of the main theme.

Bush has an ear for whipcrack dialogue and has proved she can both propel a plot and juggle complicated ideas but appears to have bitten off more than she can chew here in an attempt to shed new light on what it is to be a woman.

Otherland feels like an idea that has been in development for too long and is overthought rather than fresh out of the box.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Almeida Theatre Tickets
• Have you seen a Almeida show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
• Enjoyed this preview? Follow monstagigz on Twitter @NeilDurham, email neildurham3@gmail.com and check us out on Instagram and Facebook