Reviews for Sardines

Midnight Movie ★★★★

Performed on 3 December 2019 at Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, Royal Court Theatre, London

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Midnight Movie manages a mean feat of being both a complex play and a simple one at the same time, which could possibly work as a metaphor for the writer’s personal battles with her illness, which are never quite truly revealed but are omnipresent all the same.

On the surface of it, the play is essentially an exploration of a modern obsession with the digital world and the ability to watch almost any video at the tap of a screen in the middle of the night. Two performers, one while male and one deaf woman of colour, act as avatars describing a series of found videos unseen by the audience, interspersed with an occasional online chat interaction. Stories of a woman on CCTV battling with an unseen terror, a man bathing in a hotel, two women killing a North Korean dictator thinking they’re on a prank TV show… It is in these moments that Eve Leigh proves to be a masterful storyteller.

Admittedly, for a while at the start I was trying to get my head around what exactly was going (the performers, at first, seemed to be stuck in an experimental play that wouldn’t look out of place in a drama school) but as the play progressed we were sucked in deeper, much like Leigh’s YouTube/internet late night rabbit hole. As we dug deeper into the play it became ever clearer how much Leigh uses the digital world to escape the confines of her painful body – to say more than this feels like a betrayal of a play that needs to be felt and experienced rather than read about.

Nadia Nadarajah and Tom Penn worked well together, Penn speaking the words aloud as Nadarajah signed and mimed much of what was being said. The set design at times worked as a third character with projections filling all three walls and nearly every single word captioned for D/deaf audience members. The only minor downside of this were it making the handful of times Penn made a slight deviation from the script more glaringly obvious. Thankfully, the cast’s performances were captivating enough for this not to be a distraction for long.

While it would have been easy to provide captioning in a rudimentary format, the text brilliantly became an integral to the play through its delivery and location around the set. Massive congratulations to designer Cécile Trémolières and lighting and video designers Joshua Pharo and Sarah Readman for this exciting and effective concept. The sound design from Nwando Ebizie also deserves a notable mention, a brilliant soundscape overall cleverly using a recurring motif of Janelle Monáe’s Make Me Feel, as well as Penn’s live drum playing.

Director Rachel Bagshaw has created a striking and interesting production from Leigh’s text which without a doubt has come from a deeply personal place but delivered in an intriguing and experimental way.

My Brilliant Friend ★★

Performed on 26 November 2019 at National Theatre, London

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The National presents a revived production of My Brilliant Friend on its largest stage, the Olivier, following a sold-out run at the Rose Theatre Kingston in early 2017. Adapted from Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, writer April De Angelis has crammed the contents of four books into two plays, each lasting nearly three hours, resulting in a pair of plays that feel rushed and lacking emotion.

The story centres on best friends Lenù and Lila, played by Niamh Cusack and Catherine McCormack respectively. Part One charts their lives from children growing up in Naples through adolescence to young adulthood, the two girls almost always by one another’s side. Act one introduces a whole community of characters, some evidently more important than others as the play progresses, begging the question of what their purpose is other than to create a bustling backdrop and uneasy threat of background violence.

The answer sadly doesn’t appear in Part Two. The earlier threat of the Solara family grows ever stronger, the plot moves to Florence and the tale details how the women have forged their own separate paths, but many of the earlier characters are either forgotten or seemingly unnecessarily reintroduced.

This isn’t to suggest the performances throughout aren’t strong – far from it, the entire company are excellent throughout. McCormack, in particular, delivers a consistent sense of unease and unpredictability. As Part One progresses, Cusack’s Lenù gets stronger, developing her own identity aside from Lila. In Part Two, Lila points out she was always “the bad one”, something confirmed by another character later in the play, and yet Lenù’s choices become questionable even if they are driven by a strong motive.

The set in both parts consists of the huge Olivier stage and a series of concrete steps on castors, moved around as necessary, and projections filling the space. However, this all drowns out the intimacy in many of the scenes in both parts, the actors struggling to draw an audience in whilst lost in the space. Even when the stage is at its most sparse, the characters feel too distant.

The biggest fault of the play is the tendency to rattle through as many scenes as possible, many of which only last a few minutes to touch on a plot point before rushing on to the next. Nothing is allowed to settle, there isn’t time for emotion to be felt or breathed, or for the audience to think about what has been witnessed, and this very much works against the play. For example, there are two memorable sexual assaults in Part One but rather than reflecting on their impact we’re whisked on to the next plot point, and the next, and the next. The use of popular music in the numerous scene changes, while useful in setting the scene of which era the action takes place, also punctuates in a jarring way.

There are many clever stylistic moments peppered throughout the play, in particular the use of puppetry of clothing during the aforementioned assaults being particularly striking. But this is contrasted with the use of blank puppets as our protagonists’ young children becoming a distraction rather than an integration into the play. Melly Still’s direction should be commended for the strong visual eye but the whiplash pace of the production and regular moving of the staircases reduced the opportunity for the audience to connect with the characters.

A good adaptation would ordinarily take key characters and plot points, build upon them and breathe new life into a story for a different audience. I can’t claim to have read Ferrante’s books and I’m sure De Angelis left out a lot of content, but unfortunately My Brilliant Friend feels bloated and unnecessarily long.

& Juliet ★★★★★

Performed on 20 November 2019 at Shaftesbury Theatre, London

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Max Martin may not be a household name but without a doubt you’ll know loads of the pop songs he’s co-written over the past twenty plus years – the likes of …Baby One More Time, I Kissed a Girl, Since You Been Gone – and it’s this huge back catalogue that forms the basis of the brilliant & Juliet.

We start at the premiere of superstar writer Will Shakespeare’s latest blockbuster Romeo & Juliet, his wife Anne Hathaway having gotten a babysitter and travelled to London to see it. It is her question of “what if Juliet didn’t kill herself at the end?” that kickstarts a whole new story, written by both Anne and Will, and the premise for the musical. Will doesn’t give in easily and the two battle it out to the lyrics of a Backstreet Boys classic.

Act One focuses on Juliet and her friends travelling 600 miles to start afresh in Paris. We’re introduced to non-binary May battling with issues of gender identity, Juliet’s nurse is fleshed out and given a name (Angelique), and Anne creates the character April so that she can be part of the play too. Upon arrival they attend a ball and a love triangle is formed when Francois du Bois meets both Juliet and May on the same night.

What unravels over two acts is an evening of pure joy, a tale of female empowerment and self love, with in-jokes for the Shakespeare nerds and hilarious shoehorning of songs into the plot. But where this might be a criticism in other musicals, in & Juliet this is just part of the mischief and merriment of the production – as a fan of the songs you can’t help but enjoy how they’ve been made to work. Some songs fit quite naturally into the plot, sometimes hard to imagine they weren’t written especially for the show, whereas with others tongues are very firmly in cheeks. But that just makes it all the more fun.

There’s some brilliant mash ups (a personal favourite was Ariana Grande’s Problem colliding with Can’t Feel My Face by The Weeknd) and overall Bill Sherman’s reimagining of pop classics into musical numbers works a treat (the comic timing of the lyrics to Since You Been Gone are particularly memorable). Same goes for David West Read’s book cleverly stringing the songs together into a genuinely interesting and funny story, a comedy even Shakespeare would have been proud of.

Although this is very much Juliet’s story, the plot with the most substance to it was the exploration of Will and Anne’s marriage and the similarities to the star crossed lovers’ fateful relationship. Cassidy Janson as Anne steals the show with her witty performance and powerful voice. Similarly, Oliver Tompsett’s Will wonderfully brings us a celebrity in crisis via the strength of powergrab dance moves. Tim Mahendran too was hilarious as Francois.

The performances across the production are brilliant and I’ve no doubt this will be the start of a massive career for Miriam-Teak Lee following her starring role as the titular heroine. The set and costume from Soutra Gilmour and Paloma Young are bold, brash and explosive and work brilliantly for this contemporised historical backdrop.

But the real star of the show is the brilliant music. There’s no point in denying this is a jukebox musical (it literally starts and ends with one stage), but that’s no bad thing when the songs are this good and are made to work in this way. The second act may have felt a little rushed, with Francois’s reconciliation with his father falling victim to what could have been a hugely emotional moment, but when you find yourself smiling from beginning to end, who cares?

As the house lights came up, my first words were “I already want to see it again” and I don’t think I can give it much higher praise than that.

The Entertainer ★★★

Performed on 24 September 2019 at New Victoria Theatre, Woking

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John Osborne’s revered classic play The Entertainer is nearing the halfway mark of a three-month UK tour and has just arrived at the New Victoria Theatre in Woking. Director Sean O’Connor has cleverly transferred the action from the 1950s Suez Crisis backdrop to 1982 and the height of the Falklands War in what is unfortunately an uneven production.

Previously performed by Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh, old-school entertainer Archie Rice is brought to life by Shane Richie in a role he was born to play. Originally written as an end of the pier entertainer struggling to compete with new cultural changes such as fashion and televisions in the home, Richie’s Archie becomes an old-school comic on the club scene struggling against the rise of political and politically correct humour.

As such, the audience are invited to question the suitability of Archie’s gags in his opening routine. The old familiar ones about overweight women and mother-in-laws are well written and arguably still funny, but it does make the audience wonder why such humour was ever mainstream. By placing a famously entertaining performer like Shane Richie in the lead role adds an uncomfortableness for the audience – does the likeable Richie allow us a pass at laughing at these jokes? Regardless of these bigger questions, Richie is joyous as the self-destructive glory-hunting Archie.

The play flits between the comedy routines and the Rice family’s home life. Archie’s elderly father Billy is immediately introduced as a casual racist espousing his patriotism and ‘back in my day’ sentimentality. Pip Donaghy is faultless in the role, even if his Alf Garnett bigot act is scarily familiar.

Diana Vickers steals the show as Archie’s daughter Jean from his first marriage. Escaping an argument with her fiancé and revealing she’d attended an anti-war march the weekend before, Jean acts as a modern day moral compass, questioning her family’s views be it through argument or subtle raise of the eyebrow. However, her accent caused some confusion – Jean has “come up” from London where she has been working and studying, yet is the only northern voice among the cockney family. This confused the location and backstory, often detracting from the plot in hand. However, this shouldn’t discount Vickers’s excellent performance.

Sara Crowe was often grating as Archie’s wife Phoebe but it’s hard to tell if this was a deliberate decision from the production. Crowe’s moments when Phoebe is drunk late at night were entirely believable, never letting an argument drop when it should have long passed. Outside of these moments though, her performance doesn’t quite ring as true.

The production has some interesting touches throughout – the recurring symbol of the Union Jack in bunting and on a jacker a reminder of the family’s blind patriotism; familiar headlines from The Sun setting us firmly in Falklands-era 80s.

Yet something feels off and it’s hard to put a finger on quite what it is. There are moments when the fourth wall is broken in mistimed interludes, and the confusion around permission to laugh with Archie in his stand-up sets puts the audience on an uneven footing. Some of Billy’s racist lines appear to be delivered directly at the audience, possibly as an attempt to shock us. It’s hard to say.

For all its faults, there’s no doubting The Entertainer in this revised form is a timely reminder of history repeating itself even today – a major crisis tearing the nation apart as people question their values, responsibilities and what they deem acceptable.

seven methods of killing kylie jenner ★★★★★

Performed on 10 July 2019 at Royal Court Theatre, London

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It’s 5 March 2019 and two young women drag a body through the darkness to bury it in the stage. A few hours earlier, Forbes tweeted that Kylie Jenner became the youngest self-made billionaire ever, and it’s here this important and brilliant new play by Jasmine Lee-Jones begins.

seven methods… takes places in two spaces – the Twittersphere and IRL (or, in real life for those unfamiliar with the term). In reply to the Forbes tweet Cleo, a young black woman, tweets as her online persona @Incognegro saying “YT woman born into rich American family, somehow against all odds, manages to get more rich……” along with a meme of a black woman slow clapping. Her Twitter thread continues to accuse Jenner of appropriating black culture to be lapped up by white people before suggesting killing off the “con artist-cum-provocateur.”

Danielle Vitalis is phenomenal as Cleo/Incognegro – her frustrated anger pouring out in a mix of bitingly sharp eloquent speeches and tweets. She argues Jenner is “about as self-made as my bed”, pointing out the Forbes tweet represents hundreds of years of “anti-blackness, positive affirmations of capitalism, cultural appropriation”, white people profiteering from the pain of black women. Over the course of nearly 90 minutes, Vitalis presents Cleo’s opinions with passion and superbly delivers Lee-Jones’s use of Twitter acronyms, slang and, as her friend Kara puts it, “dissertation” -speak.

But this is by no means a one-woman show. Tia Bannon is equally brilliant as Kara, Cleo’s black mixed-race queer friend, who confronts Cleo’s use of online violent language as unnecessary. Bannon possibly has more opportunity to showcase a greater range of emotions, her upset at Cleo’s historic tweets and personal attacks (comparing her being mixed raced to being like diluted Ribena) resonating strongly with the audience. At times some of Kara’s responses to things she doesn’t understand feel a little repetitive but this is a minor quibble in an otherwise brilliant text.

Despite what the title suggests, this isn’t a play that only focuses on said fantasy homicide, nor does it only concentrate on black culture as this review may suggest. It spirals and sprawls to cover long held grudges, homophobia, racialism and racial stereotypes, gender identity, memes, the ramifications of airing your views in a public domain… the list goes on. But at no point does it feel like it’s all too much – it’s not so much overflowing with ideas but rather it attends to everything with due care, respect and attention.

It’s an interesting script to look at too in a visual sense, unlike any I’ve seen before. Not only does Lee-Jones use emojis and screengrabs but there are memes and animated gifs in there too. A note at the beginning of the text encourages the actors to embody these elements and the monstrous transformation from IRL to Twittersphere really helps mark out the difference between the two spaces along with the brilliant technical aspects of the show.

Rajha Shakiry’s design is simple but stunning – a giant web made of hundreds of threads cleverly evokes the play’s Twittersphere while the occasional strands hanging down resembling the braids and weaves the young women discuss, the thicker parts reminiscent of American lynchings. The design complements the text perfectly, as does Elena Peña’s sound design – the tweeting of birds as the audience enters another intelligent nod of what is to come, and the live distortion of voices in the Twittersphere along with Delphine Gaborit’s hugely effective movement brings to life the often horrific nature of the online world.

Alongside director Milli Bhatia, Jasmine Lee-Jones has created a production that is eye-opening, provocative and devastatingly powerful in its takedown of accepted societal norms. Clever, funny, heart-breaking and brutally honest, seven methods of kylie jenner is a near perfect play and one that needs to be seen.

the end of history ★★★

Performed on 3 July 2019 at Royal Court Theatre, London

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Jack Thorne is very much hot property at the moment with recent hit Channel 4 dramas The Virtues, Kiri, and National Treasure each feeling like they have something vitally important to say on contemporary issues, not to mention the epically successful Harry Potter stage play among his numerous stage credits. He’s an incredibly talented writer but unfortunately I spent most of his latest play the end of history… struggling to find the point of it.

That’s not to say it’s a bad play – it’s well performed and directed, there’s some snappy lines and great performances from a strong cast. It is just… fine, and nothing more.

It’s 1997 in Newbury and leftie parents Sal and David wait to meet eldest son Carl’s new girlfriend Harriet for the first time, while their youngest Tom is being kept behind in detention for a rebellious act they’re proud of. Middle child Polly is back from Cambridge University for the occasion but spends most of the time trading barbed intellectual jibes with her father. All three children show signs of promise but, although undoubtedly loved, live in the shadow of socialist ideals from their parents.

Kate O’Flynn delivers a quirky and awkward Polly, constantly butting heads with David Morrisey as her father, and has some of the play’s best lines. Her sibling rivalry with Sam Swainsbury’s Carl is also fun to watch, as is the excruciating introduction of Harriet, played with brilliant embarrassment by Zoe Boyle. The normally excellent Lesley Sharp at times feels like she is forcing her character’s slight eccentricity, to the point we could almost see the punctuation marks on stage as she took on her scripted awkwardness. Thankfully this mellowed as the play wore on, but still felt a little out of step with the naturalism of the rest of the cast.

The play moves forward in the second act to 2007. The grown-ups have called a family meeting that has left the children concerned they’re close to losing a parent. Tom is still living at home having lost yet another job, Polly is a corporate lawyer sending nude pics to her boss, while there are obvious tensions in Carl’s marriage to Harriet, who has lost her embarrassment and is much more self-assured a decade on.

The reality of their coming together is that Sal and David want to announce the will has been altered so that any inheritance goes to various charities because, as Sal puts it, “Inherited wealth is a destabiliser, it damages those without and it doesn’t really help those with”. This proves a tipping point for Tom who does something so shocking that we could feel the family’s pain and panic all at once. Laurie Davidson is consistently devastating throughout as Tom and, along with O’Flynn, are the biggest successes of the production.

The calendar changes again and we skip forward to 2017 for the final act. The kitchen is barer now, a little less life in the house. John Tiffany’s direction is most dynamic in these act changes, a flurry of choreographed movements marking the passage of time as leaves of calendar pages are torn away, furniture is moved around and costumes are changed. But it’s not particularly interesting or new to watch – it’s a good way to show the progressing of time but there’s nothing memorable about how it was executed or anything noteworthy to pick up on.

Which sums up the play as a whole quite well. It’s an okay play with pretty standard direction on a fairly unremarkable set. I’m still unsure what Thorne was trying to say with the play – are we being warned to be careful about the ideals we place on our children? Or is it about the legacy we leave, or a reflection on the disappointment when our offspring don’t live up to expectations no matter how freethinking we claim to be?

I’m still not sure but unfortunately there isn’t enough substance to make me want to keep trying to figure it out. A good cast underserved by a funny script without much to say.

The Deep Blue Sea ★★★★

Performed on 28 June 2019 at Minerva Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre, Chichester

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Terence Rattigan’s The Deep Blue Sea has recently had highly successful outings at the National Theatre in 2016 and at Chichester Festival Theatre’s main house only eight years ago, so it may come as a surprise to some for a new version to be hitting Chichester’s smaller Minerva Theatre so soon. A more intimate setting than the main house, Paul Foster’s production is an elegant and heartrending portrayal of one woman fighting the guilt of leaving her husband for an arguably less suited match.

It’s 1951 and the smell of gas alerts nosey neighbours Philip and Ann Welch to Hester Collyer’s flat. Ably assisted by their landlady Mrs Elton, the trio attempt to revive Hester while looking for clues as to what may have happened. The discovery of a note and empty bottle of aspirin suggest she may have been attempting to take her own life. As fellow neighbour and former doctor Mr Miller attends to her, Philip calls Hester’s estranged husband Sir William to inform him of his wife’s illness.

Nancy Carroll is simply stunning in the central role of Hester and delivers a powerhouse performance. Her depressive angst is writ across her face for the entirety of the play, worn down by a passion that both her and her lover Freddie Page knows is not good for either of them. In lesser hands Hester could have been delivered in a stereotypical melodramatic fashion but instead Carroll produces what feels like a truthful representation of a woman on the brink of suicide, making us feel every ache and emotion she’s going through.

There are many lighter moments in the production too, some delivered by Hester herself, but they never detract from the seriousness of what we’re witnessing. The supporting cast of Denise Black, Ralph Davis and Helena Wilson as Mrs Elton, Philip and Ann respectively were outstanding in their largely comic roles, all three providing light relief without losing sight of the gravity of the Rattigan’s text. Denise Black in particular brought a sense of things teetering on an edge, especially in the play’s panicked opening moments.

The thrust raked stage itself felt it too was teetering at time, balanced upon the bombed bricks and debris of the recently ended war. The sparse set and props were beautifully realised although there were many occasions where we missed the opportunity to see characters’ expressions in key moments, or a view blocked by another actor or piece of furniture. These can be forgiven by the intimacy afforded by performing in the smaller of Chichester’s two theatres which allowed the audience to feel the raw emotion of the central love triangle.

Gerald Kyd brought an unexpected warmth to the role of Sir William Collyer, a man of wealth and power who could easily have slipped into a caricature. Kyd embodies a man who has lost the love of his life, a man who knows that it is a love that will forever remain unrequited no matter how hard he fights. He’s contrasted brilliantly by the younger test pilot Freddie Page for whom Hester has left her husband. Hadley Fraser delivered yet another brilliant performance, at first appearing as caddish and carefree before the realisation that his lack of attention to Hester may have been the reason for the attempt on her life. What both actors superbly highlighted in their performances was the terrible impact a suicide attempt can have on the loved ones left behind – Sir William’s inability of being able to help the one you love alongside Freddie’s descent into self-blame and momentary depression.

Hester’s unlikely saviour comes Matthew Cottle’s Mr Miller. Initially brought in to revive Hester, he makes several reappearances and demonstrates a responsibility to ensure Hester stays alive. A quiet and understated performance, Cottle shows Miller’s own internal toils without ever upstaging Hester.

For ultimately this is a play about one woman living with her own guilt and the ripple effect her actions have on the ones nearest to her. A stand out production that will surely last in the memory and one that highlights very contemporary issues about the causes and ramifications of mental health. Highly recommended.

Nigel Slater’s Toast  ★★★★

Performed on 9 April 2019 at The Other Palace, London

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Following a standout run at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Nigel Slater’s Toast makes its London debut at The Other Palace. With parma violets, lemon meringue pies and a dash of nostalgia, although the play may not be an entirely slick affair, this can be forgiven for the warmth and energy radiating from the stage.

As you walk into the foyer, the smell of burnt toast lingers in the air, a hint of the sensory treats laid ahead for the audience. Years ago I saw a production of Saturday, Sunday… and Monday and still vividly remember the smell of Italian cuisine wafting through the auditorium. It was reminiscent of this, but sadly the smell of toast stopped at the door on this occasion.

The play itself is based on Nigel Slater’s bestselling memoir Toast about his discovery of the joy of food in his childhood. Told entirely first hand from Nigel’s point of view, Giles Cooper deftly plays the young boy despite being about twenty years older than the character he is portraying. At first I thought it would be jarring to see Cooper playing to a mother who looked younger than him but this was quickly forgotten.

Nigel’s mum was useless at cooking and yet she managed to instill a love of baking (and cooking more generally) that led him to become one of Britain’s best-known food writers. The first act beautifully charts Nigel’s relationship with his mother, performed superbly by the brilliant Lizzie Muncey. Her love for her son spills from the stage and sets a joyous tone for the entire evening, even in some of the darker scenes.

One such moment was Slater’s fractious relationship with his father hitting home when he beats his son in a moment of fury in the corner of the kitchen. Simple but effective, it’s hard to tell if the extra frisson of concern was because I knew I was sat two rows behind the real Nigel witnessing his own abuse.

The set itself was a simple 1960s-styled kitchen with an Aga in the corner, a Smeg-style fridge, and cupboards lining the upstage walls. Countertops would be wheeled to and from centre stage as required, various props appearing and disappearing through various doors. My hopes of the smells of live cooking on stage were quickly dashed when the jam tarts being made in the opening scenes were quickly replaced with ones they’d made earlier, a trick used throughout the show, often to comic effect.

That’s not to say that food isn’t integral to the director’s vision. Following a brilliant choreographed scene involving bags of pick & mix, the cast ventured into the aisles to share with the audience. While this was a nice touch, the subsequent rustling of sweet wrappers left the poignancy of the following scene underwhelming. Similarly during a scene where Nigel and his stepmother Joan battle to produce the best lemon meringue pie to win his dad’s heart, the cast offered up miniature versions to us. As much as I love sweet treats and free food, these moments were an unnecessary gimmick.

Jonnie Riordan’s choreography is fantastically enjoyable. Although these set pieces don’t always quite sit comfortably alongside the rest of his direction, it was very clear that he has a particular style and vision for the production which on the whole works strikingly well.

The five-piece cast are outstanding, with Marie Lawrence and Jake Ferretti each playing multiple roles deserving particular attention and praise. While Cooper fumbles his lines a few times, he carries the show from beginning to end, maturing before our eyes over the evening from nine-year-old boy to a seventeen-year-old young man getting a job in the Christmas kitchen of the Savoy.

Despite a few press night mishaps (including a mixing bowl being unintentionally knocked to the floor during the play’s opening line), Nigel Slater’s Toast is a warm crowd-pleaser of a show, passionately baked and dished up with aplomb.

Closer

Performed by Putney Theatre Company on 19 February 2019 at Putney Arts Theatre in London

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Patrick Marber’s classic play ‘Closer’ is renowned for its brutally honest depiction of the transient nature of love, sex and relationships, and the discretions that fall within these parameters. It is rarely performed outside of a professional setting due to its risqué language and harsh truths so any theatre willing to be brave and stage a production deserves enormous credit for taking such a bold choice. Unfortunately, Putney Theatre Company’s production contained a number of problems that led to an incohesive final product.

The set design and use of projections were strong throughout and high praise must go to Zoe Dobell for her striking designs. Constantly in use and working well to set each scene, a minor technical glitch in the opening scene was quickly forgiven, as were the family of flies who seemed determined to upstage the performers with their shadows. The use of some static furniture may have helped to speed up some of the slower scene changes, but I’m not sure this would have rectified the overall lack of pace in the play.

At a whopping 2 hours and 30 minutes, the play suffered from a distinct lack of energy and drive. The opening scene set the tone for the rest of the evening, with what should have been a flirtatious first meeting between Alice and Dan coming across flat. Even the brief arrival of Larry cameoing in the scene failed to inject any sense of jealousy in Dan or excitement in Alice.

For a play that relies so heavily on the relationships between the four characters, there were very few moments where any of the characters felt like they were connecting with one another. A brief moment between Grace Cullen’s Alice and Olivia Iordache’s Anna in Act 2’s museum scene provided the night’s only believable moment of connection, with an honourable mention going to the strip club scene opening the second half. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it felt like all four performers were appearing in different versions of the same play.

Jerome Joseph Kennedy’s portrayal as doctor Larry began quite overplayed with unnecessary wide eyes overworking the comedic elements, but by the end of the play he was my favourite of the quartet. He eased into the part as the evening wore on and I came to realise that perhaps his moments of overacting were to compensate the lack of energy elsewhere in the production. Grace Cullen suffered with the same inclination to overact in some scenes but on the whole produced a likeable Alice, with her thoughtful choreography in the act two opener really strong.

Olivia Iordache’s Anna never quite got up to full speed, with many of her scenes jarring against Kennedy’s enthusiastic tendencies versus Tim Duthrane’s lacklustre Dan. In Marber’s script we meet Dan as a bit of a wet fish, an obituary writer whose life is markedly improved by the arrival of Alice, before reverting back to form by the end – none of this would have been obvious from Duthrane’s one note performance, making the audience question what on earth either of the women see in Dan other than his good looks.

The staging and direction from Jeff Graves worked well but unfortunately this doesn’t make up for the fact that none of the performers were really able to bring their characters to life, nor was there any sense that any of the characters wanted to even be in the same room as one another – a massive problem in a play about relationships.

I watched the production on opening night and I really hope the cast begin to gel together and quicken the pace before this run ends – Marber’s script remains as sharp as ever and, having seen Graves’s previous work, I know he is capable of pulling out strong performances from his casts. I had high hopes for this production and I really hope it gets a much needed kick up the backside before the end of the run.