Pin Cushion

Not for everyone, the British tragedy Pin Cushion is both hard to classify, and hard to like. An oddball mother and daughter move to a new town in the Midlands, where they immediately draw the scorn of locals, who all seem to be contemptible jackasses. Lyn (Joanna Scanlon) is a middle-aged single mom who is mentally slow and hunchbacked, while Iona (Lily Newmark) is a ginger naif whose instinct to pull out of a mutually (and nauseatingly) childlike relationship with her mother is healthy, although she is ill-prepared. Iona descends into mental illness, exploited and abused by kids at school, while Lyn subjects herself repeatedly to situations where cruel people reject and humiliate her. Director Deborah Haywood toggles between reality and fantasy with frequency, sometimes confusingly, and neither Lyn nor Iona register as plausible characters—they are kind of a mashup of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Carrie, with Quasimodo substituting for high-schooler Carrie’s fanatical mother, and the bullied teen here lacking weaponized, psychokinetic powers. More self-pitying than involving, this is an optional purchase. (T. Keogh)