L'Amante Anglaise (La Mama)

In 1949, a grisly murder occurred that horrified in its perversity. The dismembered parts of a woman's body were recovered from trains all over France; arms, legs, a torso. But the head remained unrecovered and the symbolism this implied was both striking and shocking. This was a calculated crime, a cold-blooded, violent act intended to rob the deceased of their identity.

However, when the perpetrator was discovered, her motives were ineffable, her demeanour compliant, even mild mannered. Claire Lannes, an unassuming woman with a comfortable life, was an unlikely killer, somewhat aloof, perhaps a little odd, but not seemingly crazed. Yet she was responsible for something unimaginably savage, and what's more, her victim was family. Her deaf-mute cousin, Marie-Therese, had lived with Claire and her husband Pierre for 22 years before her murder. So, what had compelled Claire to dispatch her relative in such a grisly manner?

This crucial question floats calmly on the surface of Marguerite Duras' L'Amante Anglais, but the answer is not easily surrendered. The stillness of this subtly incisive work belies the seething emotional and moral complexities churning just below its glassy sheen of hyper-real conversation. The play's two hemispheres are a pair of interrogations (or perhaps a more fitting description would be evaluations), first of arrogant, pitiless Pierre and then his meek, yet irrevocably damaged wife. There are no bullish bad cops, no wailing or gnashing of teeth, no accusations or outrage. These interviews are direct and cordial and yet they reveal a fascinating counterpoint between the tortured and the indifferent, and how symbiotic these two frames of mind can be.

Director Laurence Strangio's brilliance is in resisting the urge to foist any unnecessary activity on this production. On a bare stage, flanked on either side by banks of audience, there are only our two protagonists, seated, plainly dressed and simply lit. There is nothing to obscure or distract from their exchange; this is as stripped-back as theatre gets. The absence of any flashy technicality allows the audience to be myopically focused on these quietly virtuosic performances. Robert Meldrum and Jillian Murray are understated, perhaps intimidatingly so for some theatregoers, but this isn't to say their deliveries are flat. There is a muted beauty in what they conjure, built on a pure, uncluttered empathy and an unalloyed yet devastating truth. It isn't hard to see why Murray won a Green Room Award for her performance in this production when it was originally staged by La Mama in 2015.

The "True Crime" genre has become something of a bonanza in recent years, and this is partly driven by a macabre fascination in the gory details of brutal actions. Duras penned her dramatisation of a real murder in 1967, several decades before streaming television and blockbusting podcasts chanced upon the popularity of this subject matter. But, whereas our modern-day equivalents eagerly serve up forensic details for our ghoulish entertainment, Duras focuses on the psychological over the physical. It is easy to vilify criminals, but this work blurs the borders of our moral imperative. Good and evil are not so simply polarised — there are many shades of grey in between.

La Mama presents L'Amante Anglaise to 19 Feb at Fortyfivedownstairs