There are six figures on the stage; a picture-perfect family. But only one – Ikue Nakagawa – is animated: she plays the role of mother, daughter and wife. The others are puppets, staring blank faced, unmoved as Nakagawa dutifully positions them around the space. She creates tableaux by painstakingly directing; shaping and moving the others, cajoling and caring.

Her emotional and physical labour is not rewarded. When she looks to her ‘family’ for response or support, the faces remain darkly blank and she is lost, horribly lonely. When her partner eventually turns his back completely and releases the hand she tightly held, hers flounders like a dying fish, flapping. She is lost, pain etched on her face and wrought into her body.

This careful portrait of a woman’s role in a contemporary family quietly reveals the suffering and isolation that can lie beneath the smooth gloss of an ideal-looking surface.