Review: You, Seven Dials Playhouse

As the audience settles into the Seven Dials Playhouse‘s intimate space, Sarita Plowman is already in character, carefully tying up a parcel of baby clothes while poignant music swells around her. It’s an immersive opening that sets the tone for what becomes an utterly devastating exploration of teenage pregnancy, forced adoption, and the lifelong reverberations of grief.

Mark Wilson‘s You is a two-hander that asks an enormous amount of its performers. Plowman and James Dangerfield, between them, embody every voice in this story: the birth mother Kathleen as both teenager and adult thirty years later, her parents, the adoptive parents, the father of the child, and eventually the baby himself grown into adulthood. It’s a bold structural choice that risks confusion, but both actors execute the character switches with technical skill. A handful of transitions could be sharper, but these are minor quibbles in an opening night performance that will only tighten as the run continues.

The production uses its modest stage with striking ingenuity. Scenes shift as the actors move through the space – into the central aisle, to the back of the room, circling around the audience – creating an experience that makes us complicit witnesses to private grief. The sparse set and minimal props become assets rather than limitations; empty space speaks as loudly as any scenery could, allowing emotions to fill the void. It’s physically dynamic theatre that understands how geography can amplify feeling.

Dangerfield creates distinct physicalities and vocal patterns that make each male character immediately recognisable, shifting seamlessly between father, husband, or lover. But Plowman delivers a truly phenomenal performance. Watching her navigate the emotional whiplash of embodying conflicting perspectives is breathtaking. She inhabits each woman so fully that you never lose track of who’s speaking, even when shifting mid-scene. By having the same actors embody multiple viewpoints, the theatrical device becomes thematic, a visceral reminder that adoption’s impact connects everyone through shared trauma.

Wilson’s script holds space for every perspective: the birth mother’s anguish, the adoptive mother’s complicated joy, the fathers’ various forms of complicity and helplessness, and eventually the adopted child’s need to understand their origin story. We see how silence becomes inherited, how one moment fractures multiple lives irreparably. It’s a meditation on loss, identity, and the mother-child bond that feels both deeply specific and universal.

You is devastating, absorbing theatre that refuses easy answers or redemption. It sits with discomfort, honours complexity, and lingers long after leaving. This is essential viewing.

Written by Mark Wilson
Directed by Rosie Snell
Composed by Andrew Stewart-Buttle

You plays at Seven Dials Playhouse until Saturday 15 November