8/10

Jess is a US Army veteran, returned from Afghanistan with life-changing injuries. Scarred beyond recognition, she is getting used to a new face, a new body, and a new world of physical and emotional pain.

The action is split between Jess’s VR therapy sessions and her experiences at home. Reluctant to engage with her treatment, she hoodwinks her therapist into programming this world – which is meant to be a reflection of Jess’s own aspirations – in the image of her sister Kacie’s ‘dream board’. Here, she is encouraged to explore freedom of movement, to walk, to climb, to run. To escape her disabilities and her pain.

In the real world, Jess is navigating a landscape of a very different type, one that has recently changed forever. We discover that it’s not just Jess’s injuries that have changed her life for good – the shuttle programme has ended, leaving her hometown without a purpose, and her life choices have left her lonelier than she would like to be.

As the story begins, Jess is trying to avoid the outside world, hiding herself away from the guests at her welcome party and dismissing her sister Kacie’s efforts to draw her out of herself. The rest of the play is a heart-wrenching quest in search of the broken threads of a life that might have been – the teaching career she might have had; the man she might have married (played with brilliant awkwardness by Ralph Little).

Jess’s mistrust of new experiences is reflected in her interactions with her sister’s new boyfriend, welfare scrounger Kelvin (Kris Marshall) whom she suspects of nefarious intent.  Kelvin, who is not quite the man her sister dreamed of and probably not the best she could get, seems to embody the revised and imperfect future Jess sees stretching before her; one where she cannot choose the career she wants, or the lovers she wants, but must settle for what is available. And yet, despite his faults, Kelvin is not malicious and has both Jess and her sister’s interests at heart.

It’s not hard to make the comparison between Jess and her home country – or indeed our own – as she reels from the shock of her new circumstances and what they mean.  This is a play about change – and in particular the changes we can’t control. From the accidents that befall us, and the political decisions that impact our lives, to the unintended consequences of the choices we make. When change reshapes our lives, who understands? Who really loves our changed selves? Is it the people who look after us, or the people who remember us? Is true love remembering the version of us and our lives that we feel is most authentic, or accepting who we are, in the moment? These are the questions Jess has to ask.

It’s a difficult story to tell without tugging relentlessly on the heartstrings, but Lindsey Ferrentino manages to do it – and brilliantly so. Kate Fleetwood’s Jess surveys her surroundings with dry, sarcastic humour without ever becoming unsympathetic. The dialogue is witty, but with a stilted feel that reflects the occasional awkwardness of real conversations and real lives. If Ugly Lies the Bone were a Hollywood film, it would be heartwarming. Instead, it is reassuringly bittersweet. Jess’s therapy ends before she feels ready, and she learns that there is no Level 2. Her only choice is to start her climb again. In the outside world, she makes progress, but finds no answers. There is no happy ending here. Jess’s future remains precarious, her recovery unfinished. But perhaps now she has learned the acceptance she needs to start imagining her life all over again.