Lidless *** TNT

Alice popped pills to make sure she didn’t remember anything about her stint 
as an interrogator at Guantanamo Bay, but fifteen years later it’s more
 difficult to ignore Bashir, the man who turns up at her florists demanding 
her help.


In the intervening period, she’s made a new life for herself in Minnesota – 
with a laid back, caring husband (who’s packaged up and put away his own 
junkie past) and a troubled teenage daughter.For Alice, the army was a way 
out of Texas – but she never anticipated that the price of escape would be 
so high.


In the course of 75 intense, taut minutes Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s new play
 destroys the defensive layers she’s placed between her civilian self and the
 methods she used (not just bruises but, as sanctioned by orders from above, 
Invasion of Space with all its sexual connotations) to humiliate detainees 
into confessing.
 Ultimately – and in more ways than they could ever have envisaged - Alice 
proves to be as much a victim as Bashir as their intertwined drama is played 
out in the round, the set defined by glaring neon strip lights.


Penny Layden’s Alice walks a knife edge as her world collapses, and although
 the writing is somewhat overwrought, Steven Atkinson’s compelling production 
for HighTide doesn’t flinch from showing the intimate damage that strangers 
can unknowingly inflict on each other. 


Trafalgar Studios (2), Whitehall, SW1A 2DY Tube: Charing Cross (0844 871 7632) ambassadortickets.com/trafalgarstudios Till 2nd of April (£10 - £17.50)