This is the tale of two estranged sisters, Bea (Rosa Cavaliero) and Veda (Holly Atkins), who have not been on speaking terms since their dad’s funeral when Bea scratched something obscene into the paintwork of Veda’s car. It is a picture of family bond and family friction, of unresolved grief and handling one’s own fate all packed into Chloë Lawrence-Taylor’s sixty-minute debut play.
Bea, who still lives in the parental home, is an inveterate hoarder. I fear I am too (thousands of theatre programmes and still counting), but not on her surreal scale. Designer Naomi Dawson provides a setting in which every surface is piled high. The bedrooms upstairs are chock-a-block with no access, the staircase has disappeared, there is just one unburdened chair to sit in and a kettle gets boiled on a high shelf. Bea deems to have more feelings for things than for people. She bought a set of cutlery identical to one he already had so it wouldn’t feel lonely—like she does, but she won’t let people in because she doesn’t want them to see how she lives.
Veda, however, has turned up, standing outside in the rain, soaked by the time Bea lets her in. Bea's situation seems to have developed since their mother died (she was another hoarder) and she was trapped there by their father’s neediness. We learn more about her than her sister, but Veda, who says her Sid is living in the shed he took so long to build, is there because she knows her time is limited and believing Sid won’t know how to handle their son Ash who wants motherly-natured Bea, with whom he used to connect when little, to look out for him. In the latter part of the play, we see that connection tested.
The pile-up of things and an attempt to mend broken items double as a metaphor for the load of other baggage that needs to be jettisoned and attempts to repair relationships, and there is even a hint that the whole first act could be fantasy. Ash denies his mother’s visit to Bea happened, Bea claims it was yesterday: here, different recollection and hence division are writ large, or perhaps there is something else deliberately hidden (why is Bea in hospital?).
There is plenty to ponder here, but it is the volatile relationship between the two sisters with a core affection underlying its explosions that makes Personal Values so watchable. With Archie Christoph-Allen as Ash, we get another intriguingly equivocal relationship played out between him and his aunt.
Atkins and Cavaliero make Bea and Veda believable siblings, their reality makes their surreal surroundings seem real too, though when they are going at it hammer and tongs, director Lucy Morrison lets their energy sacrifice clarity. Yes, it is crystal clear if you know what is being said—but the audience hears it for the first time!