Jade Anouka in Otherland [Marc Brenner]

CHRIS Bush’s latest play is an imaginative, sometimes profound, meditation on identity, womanhood and personal transformation.

Harry (Fizz Sinclair) and Jo (Jade Anouka) used to be happily married. After they break up Harry begins the difficult journey to become Harriet while Jo builds a new life with Gabby (Amanda Wilkin), who she meets while hiking in Peru.

Harry’s transition is adroitly and compassionately portrayed by Bush, the playwright behind the Olivier Award-winning Standing at the Sky’s Edge, and herself trans.

Harry’s discussions with her US-based mum (Jackie Clune), who is both supportive and dismissive of her choices, are difficult and sometimes heart-rending to hear.

Gabby desperately wants children, Jo does not. When Gabby discovers she can’t carry a child, Jo reluctantly agrees to become a mother.

Bush depicts the parallel changes that occur in Jo and Harry’s bodies – a surge of hormones, a change of shape, a softening.

While the first half of Otherland is naturalistic drama, beautifully achieved, the second part takes a surreal turn, vividly conveying the mental and physical dislocation of Harry’s surgery and Jo’s pregnancy.

Jo, alienated from her body, has become an automaton with a metal tummy, while Harriet is transformed into a mermaid-like figure, caught in a fisherman’s net; a strange specimen to be studied by Victorian scientists.

Bush sees “theatre as a machine for empathy” and her gloriously inventive play is the perfect demonstration of this. Ann Yee’s assured, well-paced production is bolstered by the live band and Jennifer Whyte’s music.

The two leads are sensational, aided by a terrific, all-female supporting cast.

Recommended.

Until March 15
Almeida.co.uk/