Benny & Kate: The Basement Flat

Fiona and Stephen's tenant has become their landlord and their daughter has taken to living in the overgrown garden, which is creeping into the house as temperatures rise.

Rona Munro's unnerving play about families, property & rampant vegetation.

What’s The Basement Flat about?

Something has happened, we don’t know what, we just know it has had a catastrophic effect on the lives of Stephen and Fiona. An unseen man paces above them, is he benign or a threat? We don’t know. Who’s stopping them living their suburban dream? It’s an atmospheric play about the unknowable and the unknown.

Age advisory: 14+ (a few expletives).

Review by Claire Gulliver 24/06/23

'Basement Flat' – Benny&Kate, written by Rona Munro 

Apprehension is a good place to start an encounter with this play, but not for the reasons you might expect.

Something is dripping. Hands in fingerless gloves tap away on a calculator. A woman in a chair adjusts her blanket. A radio from a hard-to-place decade plays what sound at first like 1980s public information warnings – or is it 1970s? When is this scene exactly?

Benny&Kate are always a must-see for me. They stare down contemporary and adult themes while bringing emotional truth to their characters. So when I read on social media that Basement Flat was unlike anything else they’d done I admit I was apprehensive.

At first we’re on recognisable ground. A scathing attack on Britain’s overblown property market: Fiona and Stephen have been forced or duped (or both) into selling their home to a property prospector who now bestrides the upper floors wielding an oligarchical power over his one-time co-habitees, now tenants. They might have to let out their daughter’s bedroom to meet his rising rent demands.

It’s tense, it’s claustrophobic. There’s something simmering. It’s not a comfortable place to be. And it’s about to get less comfortable.

As order unravels, protagonists and audience grab for the familiar things of safety: a Cath Kidston apron, a cup of herbal tea. But these anchors aren’t strong enough to hold when things have gone this feral. Superb.