A tattered US flag hangs from the steel-poled set in Femi Elufowoju Jr’s new production of Suzan-Lori Parks’s 2010 chamber piece. Even without those moth-eaten stars-and-stripes, it would be clear that what unfolds in this bare-bones domestic dive, with its sofa, fridge and sink, is a metaphor for a divided country.
Each character in this three-hander has a private space in which to spiral off into delusional monologues. Grace, a waitress, seeks solace in the diary of the title: a record of the good things she notices. Her tyrannical husband Vet, a US-Mexico border guard who fetishises the boundary-like crease in his uniform, is writing a speech for a ceremony at which he will be honoured for apprehending smugglers. His formerly estranged son Buddy records videos that have the stench of the suicide-bomber about them. Perhaps the grenade he carries is more than just a memento from his military days.
Without the biting humour of Parks’s Pulitzer-winning Topdog/Underdog, The Book of Grace gets bogged down in Sam Shepard-esque psychodrama, kitchen-sink solemnity and notes of gothic horror evoked by Vet’s backyard grave-digging. Visually, the production is on stronger ground. David Howe’s lighting, with its rust-coloured stripes of dusk breaking through the window slats, evokes a claustrophobia that is offset by a clever use of space, with the actors occasionally dispersed around the auditorium. Meaning sometimes gets lost: why Buddy sits grinning among the audience on two occasions is never made clear.
The dialogue flirts with cliche: “You and I are so alike,” Vet tells Buddy, only for the aggrieved son to spit back, “I’m nothing like you!” But the cast vary the voltage. Even as Grace struggles to believe life will improve, Ellena Vincent never makes her seem like a sap; her optimism doubles as armour. The air constricts whenever Peter De Jersey is on stage as the terrifying Vet, though he also reveals the panic beneath his rage. Pride, chivalry and trauma stir fascinatingly in Daniel Francis-Swaby’s Buddy, who oversteps boundaries with his stepmother while his own borders are breached by his father. What a messed-up family – no, country – this is.
At the Arcola, London, until 8 June
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