Raven

Synopsis

A shrill alarm pierces the pre-dawn darkness, jolting the Woman from her slumber. She stumbles through the morning routine – a hastily planted kiss, a steaming cup of tea, and the daily battle to wrestle her reluctant daughter into “big girl shoes” for school.

A Woman navigates the seemingly ordinary chaos of modern family life with her wife Joanne and their young daughter. But beneath the veneer of domestic bliss, a sinister presence looms. A raven – ancient, sardonic, and relentless – has taken up residence in the Woman’s psyche, pecking away at her carefully constructed identity. As the bird’s taunting caws grow louder, we witness the unraveling of a life built on compromise and assimilation.

Qureshi’s play is a razor-sharp exploration of internalised homophobia and the cost of conformity. Through a series of fragmented scenes, we see the Woman’s world begin to fracture. A visit to the Tower of London sparks an unsettling parallel with a grieving raven, while interactions with her flamboyantly out intern expose the depths of her repressed anger and envy. The Raven, part tormentor and part truth-teller, forces the Woman to confront the parts of herself she’s long buried – her desires, her fears, and the raw, queer edges she’s spent a lifetime sanding down.

As the play hurtles towards its haunting conclusion, Qureshi masterfully blends the mundane with the surreal. Bedtime stories morph into existential crises, and a slice of rainbow wedding cake becomes a Trojan horse for long-suppressed rage. The Woman’s desperate plea to spare her daughter from the Raven’s influence leaves us questioning the true nature of the legacy we pass on to our children. In “Queer Upstairs”, the closet isn’t a place you leave once, but a shadow that follows you, threatening to engulf everything you hold dear.