REVIEW: THE OTHER ROOM by Sarah Rickman at The Lion and Unicorn Theatre 20 – 24 October 2026
‘innovative and striking, it’s one hell of a piece of theatre’ ★★★★
It’s been the year for plays about health, healthcare and now carers. We’ve had larger-than-life dreamscapes about the NHS with the National Theatre’s Nye, Lifeline, the musical that taps the story of penicillin out to a tune, and now Sarah Rickman’s The Other Room, a harrowing, frank but thoughtful account of the person who holds death’s hand – as a full-time job.
Grace, played by none other than Rickman herself, has been coping just ‘fine’ whilst caring for her husband, Chris, who is dying of something sinister that we aren’t allowed to make head nor tail of medically. That is, until Themba (Tolu Kingba) strides through the door with a backpack, résumé and a calm, resolute certainty that he will help care for Chris – a confidence one wishes one could have in a first interview. Rejected, then recalled, Grace and Themba will dance a double step through this woman’s grief, anger, drunken stupors after nights out and post-morning runs, until the inevitable death of Chris.
In its most innovative, striking and downright cunning move, Chris never appears on stage. We hear him gagging, spluttering and wheezing through multiple recorded effects or conversations in which the audience is only privy to half the party. It’s pure genius. Fatal sickness is shown not just acting upon the patient but also as a malign dread in the family, in the carer, in all who are cast under its wicked spell.
Rickman and Kingba have an impressive chemistry. Everything flows naturally, and scene changes are sharp, inventive and clearly painfully thought through: clothes are used to show Kingba stretching the symbolically emaciated body of Chris; installed lighting flashes ambulance blue whilst horrific spluttering sound effects boom out of the speakers. Chris exists within the EJ Walker tech desk, and it is here that he can wreak pain upon the audience.
The play overpromises its comedy. Sure, there is humour, and the pair we see on stage have a great ability for innuendo, surely aided by director Bellaray Betrand-Web. But the play’s comedy is drowned out by the constant, near-insistent physical and emotional toll of Chris’s terminal illness. The ending is also rather abrupt, off-key and unexpected. The audience hears Chris flatline, and that’s it. Full stop.
Whilst not the “bittersweet comic drama” promised, it’s one hell of a piece of theatre. Playing at the 2026 HERE I at the Lion & Unicorn this October, it is an honest portrayal of the people we need most and the ones we so often forget.
The Other Room at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre, Kentish Town 20 - 24th of October 2026
BOX OFFICE https://www.thelionandunicorntheatre.com/whats-on
Written and Performed by Sarah Rickman
Directed by Bellaray Betrand-Web
Performed by Tolu Kingba
Produced by Ciara Pouncett
Photography: Holly Darville
