Crimes of the Heart
★★★★☆ Deep
Assembly Roxy: Wed 19 – Sun 22 Mar 2026
Review by Thom Dibdin
Strawmoddie Theatre Company bring a thoroughly entertaining and emotionally direct production of Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart to the upstairs room of Assembly Roxy to Sunday.
This is a production which, like its 1970s Hazlehurst, Mississippi characters, has its flaws. However, these are very much on the surface, and don’t detract from the company’s fascinating exploration of the deeply fractured Magrath sisters.
Alice Pelan (Lenny). Pic: Andrew Morris.
The Magraths come from a dysfunctional family. There isn’t a big sign over the door at the start saying “dysfunctional family lives here” or anything, but neither is it a spoiler to say that it is so.
The discovery of the extent of the disfunction and the way it has oozed down into the finest cracks in their psyches is why Henley’s script is so very good – and you can easily see why it won the1981 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
enthralling
The way that director Alex Card goes about making those revelations is what makes this production so very enthralling.
Yes, it is over-melodramatic at times, and high pitched, and filled with realistic life situations where characters are talking over one another so you can’t hear everything which is being said.
Amélie Berry (Babe) and Norliza Matheson (Meg). Pic: Andrew Morris.
But it has a big inner truth about it. Card makes it all about the difference between what the characters say and what they do. Yes, the words count. But it is the characters’ reactions to those words and the way that reaction impinges on the audience’s prior knowledge, that really makes this sing.
Such is true of each of the central trio of actresses, but it is particularly so for Amélie Berry as the youngest, Babe. The only married sister, she arrives at their Grandaddy’s home, the kitchen of which is the setting for the whole play, out on bail after having shot her husband.
a triumph of character observation
Her relationship and interactions with her young lawyer, Barnette Lloyd (a hugely impressive Gregor Dickie) are a triumph of character observation. But even they are topped when her true feelings are revealed. Although nothing is said out loud, it is utterly heartbreaking.
Norliza Matheson plays the central sister, Meg, with all the energy and unbridled exuberance of the prodigal returnee, whose ebullience is a coping mechanism and a shield against her inner turmoil.
Gregor Dickie (Barnette) and Amélie Berry (Babe). Pic: Andrew Morris.
She is back in Hazlehurst from California where she has gone to pursue a singing career. Home at the behest of Babe and because the oldest sister, Lenny, knows that their Grandaddy, lying in hospital for the last three months, is approaching the end of his life.
If there are moments when Meg is over-wrought, there is nothing wrong in Matheson’s depiction, rather, it is the forced bonhomie of Meg’s shame. The scene with her ex, Doc Porter (Nicholas Thorne), is a delicious one. Thorne keeps it commendably straight, while Matheson dances through Meg’s overt manipulation of a one-time flame.
least deeply complicated
Central to the whole piece, if not its constant focus, is Lenny Magrath. Thirty and still single, Alice Pelan makes her the least deeply complicated of the three. Here is a woman who has been keeping a family together, coping with their aging grandparents in whose house they live and is clearly bewildered at her own maturity, still perceiving herself as the teenager she was when their mother died.
Lenny’s self perception is not helped by her infantilisation by their snooty cousin Chick, who sees herself as the victim of all the various minor human frailties her Magrath cousins have committed. Thus exposing her to gossip in this tight-knit community.
Alice Pelan (Lenny) and Grace Gilbert (Chick). Pic: Andrew Morris.
Grace Gilbert gives Chick an air of superiority and insufferable entitlement which makes you want to pick her up and throw her out of the door. Chick might be a caricature, but her role in providing a scratching post for the sisters to push against is central to the play’s success.
Card and his production team of Pelan and Gilbert on props and set design, have done a great job in creating the worn-out kitchen. It’s clearly of the play’s seventies setting, but still contains elements built up over the grandparents’ lives together. The sisters wear it lightly, plonking around, making lemonade, hoiking a coke out of the fridge and dipping into the cookie jar.
naturalism
The costumes too, are well observed and help the play’s naturalism. However, there are issues with how the company handle what are now old fashioned elements of the production, such as smoking or using a dial telephone. These aren’t overtly wrong, but sometimes feel a bit more clunky than other parts of the physical performance.
Nicholas Thorne (Doc). Pic: Andrew Morris.
There are other things which just need a bit of a nudge or a tightening up. The steep banking of the seats means that too often the company are speaking down into the table not up to their audience.
The elements of the sound are well thought out, particularly an ominous sub-bass hum that accompanies some tense scenes. However the sound design can be intrusive; clunking car doors sound as if they are on stage, not in the wings – and surely the music should come from the old radio warming the back shelf of the set.
thoroughly engaging
Beatrice Nicol’s lighting design is well thought through, too. However its programming and operation is often too noticeable, particularly when transitions are not in sync with the action on stage.
But no amount of surface flaw can detract from the heart of the piece, which lies in its understanding and reflection of its characters.
Strawmoddie’s Crimes of the Heart is a thoroughly engaging piece of theatre, one whose characters will slip into the cracks and their future stories niggle at the corner of your mind.
Running time: Two hours and 30 minutes (including one interval)
Assembly Roxy (upstairs), 2 Roxburgh Place, EH8 9SU.
Thurs 19 – Sun 22 Mar 2026
Thurs – Sat: 7.30pm; Sun: 2.30pm.(Upstairs).
Tickets and details: Book here.
Alice Pelan (Lenny), Amélie Berry (Babe) and Norliza Matheson (Meg). Pic: Andrew Morris.
ENDS
