Bethan Kitchen’s Gender the Elephant introduces us to Bess and Bobby, twins who hang out in the Vesper café every day. The café is minimally furnished: a chair, a table.  The words and gestures of India Semper-Hughes give the café shape and bring its inhabitants – regulars and waitresses – to life.

Semper-Hughes is the only actress on stage. She plays Bess, although she speaks the odd line in the character of Bobby. However, as with the café, Bobby is mainly given depth and colour by Bess’s reactions to him. Indeed, for a character who is not actually there (except for a brief appearance as a puppet), he is extremely well drawn. Kitchen has certainly succeeded in her goal of “making the audience feel they have a relationship with more than one character”.

One day, they become obsessed with the myth of Hermaphrodite. Their Classics teacher, a further and very successful incarnation of Semper-Hughes, has told them about a water nymph who loved a young man so much their bodies became one.

This catalyses their quest to become genderless – this is a psychological transformation, one in which they simply stop thinking about gender. They soon discover, however, that by trying to stop thinking about gender it becomes the elephant in the room.

A sense of expectation is created as the twins attempt to become hermaphroditic. The audience waits with the characters, and the middle of the play feels rather like an empty space in which to consider gender.

Writer Bethan Kitchen told CUTV that she was inspired by filmmaker Jim Jarmusch: “All of his films don’t really have a plot, they’re just interesting conversations between two people, which are hilarious and sad and tragic and beautiful, because they’re about these two characters and their relationship”. This is a good description of the play: there is a plot of sorts, but somehow it does not seem to have a classic narrative arc. It lacks the period of building tension leading up to the climax, but it is funny and sad and full of interesting conversations.

This play is not a lecture. It is a series of questions, not a series of answers. Why does gender matter? Do you have to be one thing in order to be a woman, and another thing in order to be a man? Can you be both?

When a character called ‘fleshy hourglass’ makes an appearance, Bobby remarks that Bess is “not like her”, that she has tipped the scales too far in the other direction. “Fleshy hourglass plus man equals perfect balance,” says Bess, “but me plus man equals too much man”. This statement does not seem to make her uncomfortable. The audience feels that she is saying something true, but it does not harm her or make her less worthy. Her tone is one of almost detached interest.

Semper-Hughes’ performance is excellent. Her task, to create a presence large enough to fill a whole stage and maintain it for an hour, is far from easy. There is the occasional moment where we feel the weight of this effort, where her actions or words seem strained or somehow too precise. For the most part, however, she cannot be faulted.

The maturity of this script cannot be denied. It refrains from pushing an answer to the questions it raises, and each line has been crafted with care. Don’t be put off by the idea of a one-woman show with gender in the title: this probably won’t be what you think.

Gender the Elephant is on at the ADC at 11pm on Friday 29th and Saturday 30th November.