Told in reverse, Run Sister Run unfolds like a photograph in a darkroom, revealing love, damage, and everything in between. Written by Chloë Moss and directed by Marlie Haco, the play explores a fractured sisterhood with remarkable emotional clarity.

Spanning decades but told backwards, the performance begins with estrangement and rewinds through sacrifice, abuse, addiction, and, at its core, a profound, complicated sibling love. The story begins where most would end: with resentment and silence. Connie (Jo Herbert) is a mother and wife trapped in the domestic fallout of an abusive marriage. Ursula (Kelly Gough) is her estranged sister, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict whose life has spiralled in and out of control, with several visits to prison. What unfolds is not a linear journey of reconciliation, but a rewind through time, revealing their shared trauma, failed compromises, and moments of tenderness they’ve perhaps been forcing themselves to forget.

The staging is minimalist but quietly profound. A panoramic mirror stretches across the back of the set, used for touch-ups, reflection (both literal and figurative) and concealment of characters when not in a certain scene. It’s an elegant metaphor for the ways we perform, hide, and perhaps distort the truth in the name of family.

Moss’s script is sharp, original, and sentimental. It is never cold. Violence is staged with choreographic flair and a swelling, string-heavy score, and there’s a kind of visual poetry to the way the mess accumulates. The various costume changes are discreetly tucked inside confetti-filled containers/vases, and the set becomes increasingly chaotic as the sisters regress to girlhood.

Gough’s portrayal of Ursula when under the influence is extraordinary: sweaty, slurring, utterly without vanity. You could actually smell the booze on her and in the room. The audience around me viscerally recoiled and leaned in all at the same time. Herbert’s Connie very much has ‘older sister energy’ and is straighter and harder to read by design, but no less compelling.

Run Sister Run is a study in empathy, grief, and the quiet damage we carry. It is a reverse chronological triumph that reminds us: sometimes, you have to rewind to understand what broke in the first place.

Run Sister Run is running at Arcola Theatre until Saturday 26 July.