Review: The Lodger at the Unity Theatre ****

Home is where the heart is. There’s no place like home. And, as Maya Angelou noted, the ache for home lives in all of us.

That ache is at the centre of writer-performer Dora Colquhoun’s latest production The Lodger – visiting the Unity for two nights at the end of a tour and which is an intriguing, off-kilter meditation on home, self, safety and that craving we all have for belonging somewhere and to something.

Its creator plays a quartet of human characters, all with their own fears, foibles, hopes and dreams, along with a skittish deer (a creature that feels almost mythical and most definitely symbolic) whose natural home is constantly under threat from sudden and potentially lethal human intervention.

Among the humans we’re introduced to is the no-nonsense Sunday school teacher with deep religious conviction and a wise and receptive soul, cantankerous ‘old Annie’ – lonely in her inner city home where she offers cheap accommodation in exchange for tea and chat (an exchange that isn’t always equitable), and a displaced young woman Kelly, eager to please but damaged and vulnerable, who longs for nothing more than stability and a room of one’s own.

Colquhoun, who has built her creative practice steadily over the decade since she was part of the Hope Street Emerging Artists programme, is a purveyor of what she calls ‘storytelling with heart’ and there’s certainly heart to be found in The Lodger if you are open and receptive to the simmering rawness found behind the façade of its disparate cohort of characters.

Above: Composer and performer George Jenkins. Top: Dora Colquhoun in The Lodger.

Funny and melancholy, outrageous and affecting, and more than a little trippy, the show also has an evocative and enchantingly melodic score from composer George Jenkins who emerges from being part of the furniture – be prepared for a surprise entrance – to become an entwined part of the wider performance.

Mini scenes are linked not only with music but also with Colquhoun’s ‘lodger’ narrator dispensing some sly and plainly delivered ‘home’ truths to her audience along with lessons in mindfulness.

Colquhoun is a neurodivergent artist (it informed her well-received 2023 touring show ADHD the Musical) and The Lodger, which is produced by Liverpool disability arts company RAWD, is presented in accessible form with slightly raised lighting within the Unity’s main theatre space, as well as audio description – augmented with descriptive asides from Jenkins at the keyboard and closed captioning, albeit on a frustratingly tiny screen.

Catch the show for a final time at the Unity this evening.