Muhmah , by Jesse Weaver, High Tide Festival, The Cut, Halesworth, May 10It is Halloween and the trick and treaters can be heard outside the home-from-hell where a brother a sister and their stroke-disabled mother live, or at least exist.

David Green

Muhmah , by Jesse Weaver, High Tide Festival, The Cut, Halesworth, May 10

It is Halloween and the trick and treaters can be heard outside the home-from-hell where a brother a sister and their stroke-disabled mother live, or at least exist.

Twins, Selene and Michael, now 30 years old, were born with their hands wrapped around each other's throats. Their mother had failed to abort the foetuses.

It is not a happy home. The twins are damaged individuals and the tension between them stretches from a dark humour to bitterness and then to violence. There is a hint of childhood abuse of Michael by his mother, played by Elizabeth Moynihan, an invalid forced to depend on the children she rejected.

This surreal drama, in which the stroke-disabled, dumb woman transforms into a walking, talking version and then into a fully able-bodied “demon” carries powerful and penetrating messages; the world in which we exist is frightening and life can make us all capable of dark deeds.

Selene (Meredith MacNeill) lives in a fantasy world of soft toys and romance. She is a sexually frustrated woman who lives in a physical and mental mess yet displays obsessive tidiness, feeds her mother on cat food and deludes herself about romance.

Michael (David Paisley) still clutches the plastic gun of his childhood and hides his face in a ghoulish mask as, with his sister beside him, they watch and fight over television programmes.

This play, directed by Steven Jon Atkinson, features three fine actors who are convincing in their torment. It is, at times, an uncomfortable watch but strangely compelling.

David Green