Is God Is review, Royal Court: Bizarre, beautiful revenge tale is a technical triumph

Aleshea Harris rolls farce, revenge thriller and western drama into one with dynamic, dizzying effect

Tamara Lawrance (left) and Adelayo Adedayo in ‘Is God Is' (Tristram Kenton)

The bond between twins is one well documented in popular culture, from Twelfth Night to The Parent Trap. Now receiving its UK premiere at the Royal Court, Aleshea Harris’s Is God Is explores the topic once more, telling the story of two sisters forged in violence. First staged in the US in 2018, it earned rave reviews and multiple awards; under Ola Ince’s direction, it is easy to see why. A show of contrasts, Is God Is rolls farce, revenge thriller and western drama into one. A theatre production that has the audience gasping aloud in genuine shock is a rare thing, but Is God Is achieves it (and then some).

As the lights go down, flames burst from the stage, with two figures writhing on the floor. They’re (non-identical) 21-year-old twins Racine (Tamara Lawrance) and Anaia (Adelayo Adedayo), living together in the southern US. Racine is the louder sister, while Anaia is chastised for being emotional “like a lil bish”, something she denies with a scowl. But for their differences, they share mannerisms, a southern drawl and the same scars on their bodies. Lawrance and Adedayo are phenomenally strong actors, unafraid to let the other shine, while also knowing that, as bickering siblings, that spotlight has to be snatched back.

The girls’ scars come from a fire when they were young that killed their mother, a figure they call “God” (“Well she made us, didn’t she?” Racine says). They’ve defiantly lived their lives as orphaned outlaws, until, almost 20 years later, Racine receives a letter from God herself, asking to see them. She (Cecilia Noble) is wheeled in to prophesy from her hospital bed, her scar-covered “body like uh alligator”, imaginatively executed by the stellar make-up team. God calls on the girls in a sonorous voice to make the man who did this to her “real dead” – although she adds that “lotsa blood is fine”.

So begins the quest to California to find this man and avenge their mother. Every stage in the journey ushers in a new style, the title of each scene laid out in neon fairground signs, projections and a vintage American postcard backdrop. Chloe Lamford’s changing designs could feel jarring, but when paired with the tonal shifts of the script, it somehow works. We accept them for the bizarre visual treat they are, a sharp juxtaposition with the bodies that pile up in increasingly macabre ways en route.

Where Anaia and Racine are given moments of quiet throughout the play, the characters they meet are grotesque parodies portrayed by an exceptionally strong supporting cast. Chuck Hall (Ray Emmet Brown) is a day-drinking lawyer in an expensive suit jacket and Bermuda shorts (also expensive). Angie (Vivienne Acheampong) is a highly strung housewife and Mark Monero plays the cartoonish villain with ease, repeating his words with a blasé conviction you can’t help laughing at (and then feeling incredibly guilty for it).

From left: Ernest Kingsley Jr, Vivienne Acheampong, Rudolphe Mdlongwa (Tristram Kenton)

But special praise has to be given to the second twins of the show, 16-year-olds Scotch (Ernest Kingsley Jr) and Riley (Rudolphe Mdlongwa). From within their American-dream-or-so-it-seems yellow house, the pair couldn’t seem further from Racine and Anaia, one writing terrible poetry while the other waters his plants and makes salad. Among a cast of comedy heavyweights, relative newcomers Kingsley Jr and Mdlongwa more than hold their own, getting some of the biggest laughs of the show.

But for all the comedy, what makes Is God Is quite so astonishing is the flippancy with which violence is used and discussed. Racine and Anaia don’t flinch as their mother describes in great detail the accident which left them disfigured, but the audience does. But then the girls are playfully discussing how they’re going to kill the man who maimed them and a huge rock comically rolls onto stage labelled “the weapon” with a smaller rock attached. This hangs in a sock from the belt loop of Racine’s daisy dukes, an ever-present threat throughout the show. Violence is both taken lightly and feared, often within the same scene, the audience getting whiplash as they shift from laughter to horror and back again in the space of a few sentences. It is a darkly funny, shocking production – one unlike anything I have seen on the stage in a long time.

‘Is God Is’ runs at the Royal Court until 23 October