“Over There” by Mark Ravenhill
Nottingham New Theatre

When Franz’s mother escaped to the West with one of her identical twin boys, Franz, she left the other, Karl behind. Now, 15 years later, Karl crosses the border in search of his other half. As history takes an unexpected turn, the brothers must struggle to reconnect. Exploring the true essence of brotherhood and the effect political events can have on relationships,

Mark Ravenhill’s plays are no stranger to NNT as last year they performed “Shopping and F***ing”, the controversial play that launched Ravenhill’s career back in 1996.

This play is dark, and if they haven't made a film of this, then someone ought to. There are reflections of a fraternal "Single White Female" here as well touches of the supernatural.

For a play that is brash and flashy in many regards, its beauty lies in the subtle way that it builds emotion and tension between the twins.It's that emotion that explodes into the shocking end.

Franz is played by Sasha Gibson and Karl is played by Anna Scholes. In other versions of the play that I've read about, the twins are played by men, so straight away this has another twist to it and there's a lot of fun played out in several scenes, especially in the disco section.

Both Sasha and Anna give powerful and emotive performances with brilliant timing.

Directed by Charlotte Sanders, assisted by Tara Phillips, they kept that tension up, then diffused it, only to ramp it up further. It literally had me on the edge of my seat, eager to know what was going to happen next.

Produced by Harry Pavlou who also doubles as the Sound Designer (assisted by Emily Dimino) for this one.Set firmly in the 80's, as depicted by the 80's music and videos, and I love the tongue in cheek humour with Aerosmith's "Dude Looks Like A Lady" as these two dudes were played by ladies!

The lighting design (Darcey Graham) helped to move the timeline on by fading in and out, making it easy to follow.

The set is designed by Beth Wilson, and while being sparse, it said all it needed to, therefore not distracting from the script or the actors.

The video work for this play is courtesy of Louis Djalili and placed you firmly in that decade.Research for this was also noted with the news items that were shown.

“Over There” is at the Nottingham New Theatre until Saturday 4 November 2017 and is a brilliant start to their Autumn/Winter season.