KeepsakeMarking American playwright Gregory Beam’s London début, Keepsake is a dark exploration of suppressed secrets, domestic transgressions and a contemporary assessment of the American dream.

Following her adoptive father’s death, Samara (Lou Broadbent) reluctantly returns home to Massachusetts, reconnecting with her sister, Abra (Dilek Rose), and rousing some painful family memories in the process. 

Beam has created a play that ceaselessly interrogates the effect of the family on later life and personal development. Immigrants from Egypt, Abra’s parents had long struggled to settle into American life, allowing the subject of domesticity to grapple with much trickier political and social issues. Beam asks his audience to consider the extent to which cultures conflict in the modern family, and in the suffocating isolation of mental illness. Most interestingly, the play examines the reality of community in the modern world, the breakdown of biological families, the disconnection between religious groups, and the perils of alcoholism and sexual violence.

Under Sean Martin’s direction, these issues are elegantly suggested rather than spelt out. Scenes of Samara and Abra’s younger parents are dispersed between the sisters’ conversations, and the play’s climactic conclusion is foreshadowed by the voicemails left by an unwanted caller on Samara’s phone. These flashbacks contemplate how much of our character we unknowingly inherit.

Annoyingly, the art of subtly suggesting these issues gets completely thrown out the window after the interval, when a series of dramatic disputes firmly takes the play’s focus off course. Whilst Abra and Samara’s conversation began with elusive and understated hints of many tensions in their family’s past, this disappointingly transforms into a frenzied outburst. Although this answers some of the questions raised by the first half of the play, it also forgets many of the wider, more political issues it had established. The narrative abandons its credibility – a great loss for a play so curious about domestic life.

Nonetheless, both Rose and Broadbent deliver seamless performances – we never once doubt that the pair have known each other for years. This is undeniably upheld by Katie Bellman’s careful attention to detail in creating a familiar family home. With iPod dock set against a dated kitchen interior, the set establishes a family who continuously put off redecorating until next year, apart from the little technical indulges which then look slightly alien.

This is an admirable production with a lot of potential. Pre-interval, this play is absorbing and excitingly inquisitive. However, with all the deliciously engaging issues it has raised, it almost seems to have set itself up for failure, leaving you frustratingly underwhelmed.

Keepsake is playing at the Old Red Lion Theatre until 25 January. For more information and tickets, see the Old Red Lion Theatre website.