Counter Culture

★★★★★ Families can do terrible things to one another, and the effects aren’t always obvious at the time. Children are particularly vulnerable. They rely on adults to explain the world to them, and when those adults conceal the truth, manipulate events or behave abusively, the consequences can last a lifetime.

These were some of the thoughts I took away from Sharp Edges, a one-woman play written and performed by Sophie Max and directed by Blair McAlpine, which I saw at Camden People’s Theatre on Thursday evening.

It’s a bleak play. Not depressing exactly, because I found it both absorbing and thought-provoking, but there’s precious little hope in it. I left wondering about dysfunctional families, the stories people tell themselves about their childhoods and how badly those early experiences can shape their lives.

The play takes its inspiration from Sophocles’ Electra, although no knowledge of Greek tragedy is needed to appreciate it. Max plays Ellie, a young woman attempting to understand a childhood marked by violence, loss and family secrets. Her father and older sister disappeared when she was six. She has grown up idolising her father, while her relationship with her mother is deeply troubled. Much of the drama concerns the distance between what Ellie believes happened and what we gradually begin to suspect is the truth.

When I interviewed Max before the production, she talked about the way children construct explanations for frightening events they don’t understand. Sometimes these stories are a means of protecting themselves. The difficulty comes later, when the adult has to confront the possibility that the version of events they’ve carried around for years is simply wrong.

That idea lies at the heart of Sharp Edges, and Max handles it particularly well.

What impressed me most about the writing was the way it gradually revealed the darker aspects of Ellie’s childhood. There is relatively little explicit explanation of the abuse and violence that have shaped her life. Instead, we are given fragments of information, odd remarks and details that initially seem unimportant but become more disturbing as the story develops.

It reminded me of the better sort of psychological horror film, where what you suspect may be happening is often more frightening than anything shown directly. You start putting things together, sometimes almost without realising it, and find yourself thinking that the situation is rather worse than you first imagined.

There were moments when I could sense where the story might be heading and hoped I was mistaken.

I particularly admired this restraint because it’s quite difficult to achieve. A writer has to trust the audience to recognise what is being suggested without having everything explained. Max does this with considerable skill, allowing a sense of dread to develop gradually. The things left unsaid are often the most disturbing.

Her performance is excellent. Carrying an entire production on your own is no small achievement, especially when the material is so emotionally demanding. I found myself paying particular attention to her facial expressions and body language. There was a great deal going on beyond the dialogue, and she communicated much of Ellie’s anger, confusion and vulnerability through movement and expression.

Some of the strongest passages brought together the quality of the writing and Max’s abilities as a performer. I was particularly struck by the sequences in which Ellie talks about being in the sea. The descriptions were vivid, but it was the delivery that made them memorable. Max managed to give the words a physical quality, so that you could almost experience what she was describing.

There was also a recurring passage about the different ways someone might be killed with a knife. This was repeated at intervals, although never quite in the same way. Changes in emphasis, movement and delivery gave it an increasingly ritualistic quality.

I thought this was particularly effective. The repetition was unsettling, but it also suggested how deeply violence had become embedded in Ellie’s thinking. It was no longer simply something associated with events in her past. It had become part of her imagination, something she returned to and rehearsed.

We are left wondering how far that process might eventually go.

The connection with Electra is clear enough. In the Greek tragedy, revenge is bound up with grief, family loyalty and an understanding of justice that is far from straightforward. The characters justify their actions by reference to what has been done to them, although the family history contains plenty of wrongdoing on all sides.

Max brings those concerns into a contemporary setting. Ellie wants to put things right, but what does that actually mean? Is revenge a form of justice, or does it merely perpetuate the violence that has already damaged so many lives?

The play doesn’t provide reassuring answers, which is probably just as well.

I did, however, have some reservations about the writing. There are descriptive passages that go on longer than I think they need to. Some are beautifully expressed, and I enjoyed them, but occasionally I felt the point had already been made and the description was continuing unnecessarily.

This is particularly noticeable because Max is capable of being so economical elsewhere. When she is hinting at the darker aspects of Ellie’s family history, a few words can achieve a remarkable amount. I would have liked to see more of that discipline applied to some of the longer descriptive sections.

A little trimming would improve the pace without sacrificing the quality of the writing. Indeed, I suspect some of the stronger passages would have even greater impact if the production moved through certain sections more quickly.

The staging is minimal, consisting largely of the suggestion of a room, a window and a doorway leading elsewhere. There’s little detailed scenery, but I didn’t feel anything was missing. The production relies on Max’s performance and the audience’s imagination, and the simplicity of the set suits it.

Lighting and sound are both used very effectively. The lighting helps establish the changing atmosphere, while the sound provides transitions between different moments and situations. In a play where the physical surroundings remain largely unchanged, these elements are particularly important. Blair McAlpine’s direction makes good use of them without distracting attention from the central performance.

There is some humour, although rather less than I had expected. A few lines drew laughs from the audience, but for most of the evening people were very quiet, concentrating on the story. It was certainly not an audience inclined to interrupt the performance with much visible reaction.

I had expected a little more lightness, partly because Max had spoken about Ellie’s humour in our earlier interview. She was keen that the character shouldn’t be defined entirely by what had happened to her, and described her as witty, stubborn, imaginative and capable of making people laugh.

Those qualities are present, but they are heavily overshadowed by the darker material. I don’t necessarily regard that as a fault, although it contributes to the overwhelming bleakness of the production.

That bleakness was probably my main reservation, apart from the occasional lack of economy in the writing.

There is so little suggestion that Ellie might be able to escape the influence of her childhood or find a more hopeful future. I realise that this may be precisely what Max intended. Trauma doesn’t simply disappear because someone recognises its causes, and there is no reason why a play should offer an uplifting conclusion to make its audience feel better.

Even so, I wondered whether there might have been room for some indication that change was possible. Not a happy ending, necessarily, but a little more recognition that people can sometimes move beyond the circumstances that have shaped them.

Perhaps that would have weakened the play’s central argument. I’m not entirely sure. But it was something I found myself thinking about afterwards.

There is a wider social issue here, too, which Max clearly recognises. In our interview, she spoke openly about being a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and explained that her work is partly motivated by a desire to represent the experiences of women and children harmed by people and institutions exercising power over them.

She also rejected the idea that stories like Ellie’s should be regarded simply as isolated family tragedies. I think she’s right.

We have had inquiries, investigations, reports and promises of reform concerning the abuse of children, yet cases continue to emerge in which those responsible for protecting them have failed. Sometimes the warning signs were missed. Sometimes they were ignored. And sometimes the people involved were simply not believed.

The family itself can become an obstacle to understanding what has happened. Children may feel loyalty towards adults who have harmed them, or construct explanations that allow them to preserve relationships on which they depend. Those explanations can become deeply ingrained.

One of the uncomfortable questions raised by Sharp Edges is how much responsibility people bear for behaviour rooted in experiences over which they had no control.

Ellie can be angry, obsessive and disturbing. We don’t have to approve of everything she thinks or intends to do, but the play encourages us to consider how she arrived at that point. Understanding someone’s behaviour is not the same as excusing it, and Max doesn’t ask us to make that mistake.

The production’s association with One in Four, which supports survivors of childhood sexual abuse, is welcome. Such organisations perform valuable work, not only in supporting individuals but also in challenging the silence and misconceptions that allow abuse to remain hidden.

I think Sharp Edges would provide an excellent starting point for a discussion about these issues.

In fact, one of my regrets was that I went to the performance alone. I would have liked someone to talk to about it afterwards, perhaps over a drink in the theatre bar. There was plenty to discuss, and I suspect different people would have taken quite different things from the experience.

I would have been interested to know whether others shared my reservations about the lack of hope, or whether they thought a more optimistic approach would have undermined the drama. I would also have liked to hear their interpretations of some of the things that were only partially revealed.

For me, that is one of the play’s greatest strengths. It leaves room for disagreement and interpretation. It doesn’t simply present an account of childhood trauma and tell us what to think about it.

Sophie Max has written an intelligent, challenging play and gives an excellent performance. Her ability to suggest terrible events without spelling them out is especially impressive, and the gradual accumulation of disturbing details produces a real sense of dread. The production would benefit from tightening some of its descriptive passages, and its unrelenting bleakness will not appeal to everyone. Nevertheless, I found it affecting and difficult to forget.

What stayed with me most was the thought that a child can grow up believing a version of events that bears little resemblance to what actually happened, and that an entire adult life can be built around those misunderstandings. By the time the truth begins to emerge, the damage may already have been done.

I walked out of Camden People’s Theatre into the London night wishing I had someone beside me to argue with about what I’d just seen. Instead, I found myself turning the questions over in my own mind.

And I’m still doing that.

For a play about the terrible consequences of things left unsaid, Sharp Edges gives us an awful lot that needs talking about.

By Pat Harrington

We interviewed Sophie Max here

Sharp Edges

Written and performed by Sophie Max
Directed by Blair McAlpine
Camden People’s Theatre, London
11–14 November 2026

The production is associated with One in Four, which supports survivors of childhood sexual abuse. To learn more or make a donation, visit https://oneinfour.org.uk/donate/

Theatre information and tickets: https://www.cptheatre.co.uk