Deadheads review – the fraying of two sisters’ childhood bond

Three Sisters Productions is a theatre company founded by real siblings. You can tell in this delicately observed and deftly written drama about a pair of sisters whose relationship is traced over two decades.
There are heart-to-hearts and secrets. There is spikiness too and they are not always sisterly but you feel the well of love between them over the course of Maddie Lynes’ play. The story slides between flashbacks and the present day, beginning with a children’s game of hide-and-seek and ending as they clear out the family flat in readiness for a new start.
The siblings’ dynamic is caught well in the script, with the open adoration of younger Jade (Gráinne Dromgoole) towards the older Miriam (Maria Pointer) in the earlier years, so their estrangement by the time they are in their 20s is all the more puzzling.
Under the direction of Cara Dromgoole, the drama swivels back and forth to reveal what has happened to them, from a father who has left this middle-class family home to start a life with another woman, to a stressed single parent household. In adulthood, Jade has stayed close to their mother, while Miriam, five years older, has become a high-flyer in Singapore and long ago stopped visiting her sister back home.
Lynes’ writing has a lovely layered quality, with the tone changing from hostile to teasing to silly, affectionate and prickly again. They talk over each other, pry and press each other’s buttons. Gráinne Dromgoole performs the happier and more playful sister with verve. Pointer has a more subdued and understated quality, which brings intimacy but sometimes lines are so softly spoken or swallowed that they are lost. Other times this more troubled role feels too muted, so even when the script builds in intensity, the drama before you does not quite keep up.
The dynamic between the actors is affected as a result, the emotions underplayed and the drama not quite allowed to become full-bodied enough. But the writing keeps the momentum going and it is clear that Lynes has mastered the language of middle-class sisterhood.