The Urmetazoan – Hampstead Theatre

There is something genuinely refreshing about The Urmetazoan. At a time when theatre can sometimes feel like it needs to announce the scale of its ideas, Alex Rugman’s play approaches questions of science, space travel, human survival and the future of the species through something much more intimate: two sisters who have not spoken to each other for seven years.

Alice, played by Dorothea Myer-Bennethtt, is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist preparing for a one-way mission to Mars, where she will work towards establishing a human population. Abigail, played by Meghan Treadway, has taken a very different route through life. She is impulsive, carefree and much more interested in living in the present. Alice has spent her life looking towards the future, while Abigail is concerned with the messy, immediate realities of being alive. Their differences create the foundation for a relationship that is affectionate, frustrating and deeply dependent. As Alice prepares to leave Earth, she asks Abigail to come and stay with her. What initially appears to be a practical arrangement gradually becomes an opportunity for the sisters to confront the history between them. Ben Allen’s Will, Alice’s former lover and fellow scientist, provides a third perspective on Alice’s decision and on the relationship between the two sisters.

At the centre of the play is the idea of the urmetazoan, the last common ancestor of all animals, and the question of what it means for humanity to survive. The scientific premise opens up much larger questions: survival for whom, and at what cost? Abigail repeatedly challenges Alice’s assumptions about humanity’s future, bringing the conversation back from the scale of Mars and the species to everyday life on Earth. There is also an interesting sense of survivor’s guilt running underneath these exchanges. Alice is preparing to leave in the name of human survival, but Abigail keeps asking what that survival actually means for the people and relationships being left behind.

The writing is the production’s biggest strength. Rugman writes with a playfulness that allows the enormous questions at the centre of the play to emerge through character rather than exposition. The relationship between Alice and Abigail is complicated without becoming difficult to follow. They know precisely where to push each other’s buttons, and their conversations move between humour, frustration, affection and vulnerability.

The performances handle this tension particularly well. Dorothea Myer-Bennett’s Alice has a strong sense of what is happening underneath the character’s certainty. Alice presents herself as determined, rational and unwilling to entertain doubt, but there is an unease beneath that surface. Myer-Bennett gradually allows that fear to emerge without undermining Alice’s strength. There is an unraveling happening underneath the character’s controlled exterior, and the performance makes that increasingly visible. Meghan Treadway brings a different energy as Abigail. Her performance has a natural playfulness and impulsiveness, but she uses that energy to build rather than dissipate the tension in the room. There is vulnerability beneath Abigail’s humour and apparent carelessness, and Treadway allows both sides of the character to coexist. Ben Allen’s Will provides another perspective on Alice’s choices and prevents the play from becoming entirely contained within the sibling relationship.

Anna Ledwich’s direction gives the production a strong rhythm. The play moves between fast, terse exchanges and much quieter moments in which the silence allows us to sit with what has just happened. When The Urmetazoan leans into its more surreal and visual moments, it opens up another register beyond the dialogue. The production creates an illusion of scale, possibility, hope and despair without needing to literally construct the world of the play.

Tomás Palmer’s set is Alice’s apartment, located close to the site from which her mission will launch. It begins as a relatively complete domestic environment and is gradually stripped back as Alice packs away her belongings. The process becomes a visual representation of departure: the more Alice prepares to leave, the less there is left behind. Jonathan Chan’s lighting works beautifully with this transformation. Different elements of the set are picked out at different moments, creating a strong sense of changing time and space. Sarah Spencer’s sound design complements the visual language, building tension and contributing to the changing emotional temperature of the scenes. There are several moments when the stage becomes such a rich visual frame that the actors do not need to say anything. Their positioning, the space between them and the way the light holds them communicates enough.

The Urmetazoan ultimately becomes less about whether humanity can survive on another planet and more about what we carry with us when we leave someone behind. Rugman’s writing, Ledwich’s direction and the strong performances give that question plenty of room to resonate, while the visual world of the production gives the play a scale that reaches well beyond the walls of Alice’s apartment.

Reviewer: Gaurav Singh Nijjer
Reviewed: 24th September 2026
North West End UK Rating: