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Harry’s émigré mum (Jackie Clune) wonders why Harry can’t “just” fly to a family party on her old, male-named passport, when the medical establishment requires her to live fully as a female in order to get treatment.
Harry, meanwhile, becomes a mer-creature – half woman, half fish – rescued from a fishing net to become an object of curiosity for Victorian scientists, then reviled as a monster when she tries to fit in with land-based, female society.
The first half sees the couple struggle to make it work and details the countless chagrining moments that Harry, a scientist, is forced to live with.
The shift from naturalism and the split narrative don’t entirely work, which Bush seems to acknowledge in a tacked-on meeting in a café where Harry and Jo tie up all the loose ends.
Three themes – the needs of a trans woman to live as herself, the pressure on women to reproduce, and the difficulty of entirely accommodating a partner – course through Chris Bush’s lively, humane and erratic play.
