Mommie and the Minister

Declan Greene and Ash Flanders have created a nightmare vision of childhood for Sisters Grimm, which is dark, disturbing and utterly bizarre.

Twins Edmund (Flanders) and Harriet (Gillian Perry) have been incarcerated in a cellar for the last 20 years, but still act as if they were six years old. Every day, their beloved Mommie (Gerard Williams) visits to reward them with slops, promising that they can return upstairs to visit the Minister when he is ready to see them.

This would simply be hilarious fun if the memory of Josef Fritzl were not so fresh in the memory. With those overtones, however, their is a poignancy and a sharp edge of malevolence to the production.

Flanders and Perry create a complex, tight-knit duo in the twins. Although their world is clearly slipping from them and each has their own sneering disregard for the other, they are completely dependent. And while they ritualise their play and relationships in this hellhole cellar, you are convinced of the upstairs world.

It is Williams (drag queen Missfit) as grotesque Mommie which brings back the comedy. As the twins begin to take power, references to big, melodramatic black and white B-movies begin to creep in and the ending spins well out of control in the bad taste stakes. Top drawer trash.