Some plays creep up on you, threading their way into your heart before you even realise how deeply they have taken root. Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew is one of those plays. Coral Wylie’s work is tender and searing, a beautifully tangled ode to identity, legacy, and the queer resilience that flourishes in the cracks of family history.
At its centre is Pip (Coral Wylie), a non-binary young person unearthing their family’s buried truths while forging their own future. Their parents, Lorin (Pooky Quesnel) and Craig (Wil Johnson), orbit around their own silences – grief, love, and an unwillingness to break the surface. And then there’s Duncan (Omari Douglas), the ghostly yet ever-present figure whose absence speaks louder than his words, a queer ancestor whose legacy is both a gift and a wound.
Wylie is extraordinary, embodying Pip’s restlessness with a sharp mix of defiance and tenderness. Quesnel’s Lorin is brittle and wry, a woman who has spent her life sealing away emotions, only for them to leak through the seams. Johnson’s Craig, meanwhile, is a quiet storm of bottled-up sorrow. Douglas brings a haunting depth to Duncan, a presence both reassuring and unsettling, his performance laced with longing and quiet devastation. Their dynamic crackles with unresolved tensions, each character dancing around conversations that never quite happen – until they do, and they hit like a tidal wave.
Some histories are written in diaries. Others are written in the soil
The play unfolds like memory, shifting fluidly between past and present, with time behaving like a living, breathing thing. Wylie’s script is rich and unpretentious, infused with a deeply queer sensibility – one that understands how identity is not just something lived but something passed down, shaped by both the stories we inherit and the ones that are deliberately withheld. Black queerness, in particular, is examined with sharp precision, as Pip attempts to reconstruct a history they were never granted access to.
Under the direction of Debbie Hannan, the production pulses with warmth, urgency, and deep-rooted emotion. Max Johns’ set merges domestic space with nature, with a light stage softened by scattered plants and two striped deck chairs. The mix of structure and wild growth reflects the play’s themes of identity and legacy. This visual contrast underscores the tension between what is contained and what inevitably breaks through-an apt metaphor for the play’s exploration of identity, legacy, and queer resilience. Laura Howard’s lighting and Holly Khan’s sound design wrap around the production like a heartbeat, intimate and immersive. The transitions between time periods are seamless, mirroring the way grief, memory, and love refuse to stay contained to a single moment.
The beauty of Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew is that it refuses to offer neat resolutions. It understands that identity is fluid, that queerness exists in the spaces between certainty and doubt. Pip’s journey is not about finding one answer but about reclaiming the right to ask the questions in the first place. There is a deep joy running through this piece – joy in chosen family, in queer expression, in the audacity of survival – but it never shies away from the ache of what is lost along the way.
Final Thoughts ★★★★★
Would I recommend Lavender, Hyacinth, Violet, Yew? Without hesitation. It lingers like the scent of something familiar yet long forgotten, a whisper from the past reminding you that you are not alone. It is theatre that speaks directly to the queer soul, a love letter to those who have ever felt unseen. And most importantly, it is a reminder that even after decades of silence, it is never too late to bloom.
It is rare to see a production so intimately connected to the act of rediscovery, of pulling something from the depths and giving it air to breathe. Wylie’s writing refuses to be sentimental, yet every moment lands with emotional weight. The cast delivers performances that make you feel like you are watching something sacred unfold – a communion with the past, a reckoning with the future.
Playing at Bush Theatre until 22 March 2025.
Disclaimer: A complimentary ticket was provided in return for an honest and unbiased review.
