With award-winning shows in the West End and New York, young British playwright Nina Raine is a rising star of international theatre and Silo's presentation of Tribes suggests the hype is well deserved.
The play breaks new ground by having deaf characters in the leading roles but avoids the pitfalls of a disability drama by treating deafness as the catalyst for an exhilarating and highly entertaining battle of competing ideas.
The play drops us into the combat zone of a dysfunctional academic family who regard rabidly offensive insults as a way of showing affection. The cut-and-thrust of fiercely opinionated dialogue delivers some wickedly funny moments while stirring up provocative thoughts on language, identity, exclusion and belonging.
At the centre of the maelstrom is the self-contained presence of deaf son Billy, who is played with great subtlety by Leon Wadham. His performance conveys the resigned frustration of a highly skilled lip-reader who is unable to engage in the frenetically paced conversation that swirls around him.
The family pride themselves on treating Billy as if he is just the same as everyone else and this seems reasonable until a new world opens up when Billy's partially deaf girlfriend teaches him sign language.
