The Ètienne Sisters ✭✭ / dirty butterfly ✭✭✭✭- Weston Studio

Family and violence. Memory and silence. Music and noise. On paper, Ché Walker’s The Ètienne Sisters and debbie tucker green’s dirty butterfly make for an intriguing double bill. Both are written by playwrights with a poet’s ear for language, but where one reaches for warmth and connection, the other drags us into darkness and refuses to let go. The Ètienne Sisters centres on three siblings pulled back into each other’s orbit, old grudges and old affections resurfacing as they attempt to navigate life together. While the plays differ greatly in subject matter, both explore the ways people live alongside one another, carrying unspoken tensions, responsibilities and regrets. Each asks what happens when communication breaks down and difficult truths are left unsaid. Walker writes with a musician’s sense of rhythm. His dialogue pulses and sways, poetic without ever losing sight of real life. The sisters snap at each other, joke, reminisce and wound one another with the ease of people who…