Anne is a struggling mother being interviewed by Liam, a social worker, about a bruise on her young son’s ear. Anne has an unfortunate parenting history and Liam has the power to take her son into care. Liam has a troubled family life and Anne is willing to do anything to persuade him not to take her son away.

The production gives the impression that it wants to be a sexy sophisticated thriller but it’s impossible to be sexy in a cold ex-veterinary collage with minimal tech and a soggy audience a couple of inches away from the stage. The actors, Clodagh Mooney Duggan and Patrick McBrearty, both come across as warm and amiable. Neither of them is sinister or strange enough to make the various ways that they threaten or entice each other particularly nail-biting and the operatic ending is too abrupt (and too coy) to be convincing.

Instead, there’s an air of suburban desperation. You could imagine these two seemingly respectable people getting themselves into a mess that will look inexplicable or pathetic if it ever gets into the newspapers, and this is the kind of thing that does get into the newspapers. The role of social workers is hotly contested. For people concerned about safeguarding, social workers are lax and don’t intervene quickly or harshly enough. For people concerned about privacy, social workers are interfering busybodies trying to impose their ideas onto hapless families.

Mothers are even more contested; they’re blamed for everything, they blame themselves for everything, and they can be demonised or defended depending on how appealing they happen to be, rather than anything they have actually done.

As well as being a mother, Anne is a musician, but her creative life has taken a backseat to her violent home life. Liam is there to judge her, but he needs to be nurtured. He’s unprofessional, and she’s irresponsible. There’s something sad and touching about the way this terrible circumstance has thrown them together. They could help each other, but the wrong choices are made.

The script is always compelling, whether you accept it as a psychological thriller about domestic abuse and potential corruption, or you take it as a slice of social realism about damaged people who may be heading for public humiliation.

The title is puzzling. It’s a sign of how invested we become that there’s a discussion in the corridor afterwards about what it could mean. Like Anne and Liam’s fate, we’re uncertain.

Good With Faces is at TechCube 0 at Summerhall until Mon 31 Aug 2026