Writer: Ryan Craig Director: Anthony Banks
⭐️⭐️💫
Poking fun at the mating rituals of the British is an age old pursuit, picked up on by Ryan Craig in this new comedy, which, if nothing else, demonstrates that very little changes over the years. The play devotes itself more to re-working familiar situations than to finding modern perspectives and, coming from a writer who has an impressive record of recent successes, it proves to be a disappointment.
Designer Simon Scullion decorates the traverse stage with geometric shapes in garish colours, giving Anthony Banks’ production a jazzy feel, but not altogether a modern one. We enter a world where twenty somethings make passing references to Tinder and the like, but where snappy chat-up lines at the bar are a great deal more prevalent than anything on Snapchat. Could this be this be 2019 or, perhaps, 1979?
The self-proclaimed master of chat-up techniques is inept Lothario, Darren (aka “Juan”), played with a jaunty swagger by Billy Postlethwaite. He is a dating dinosaur, the sort of man who, 40 years ago, would have been wearing medallions on chains around his neck. Darren sublets a room in his flat to the timid Martha (Evanna Lynch), who is infatuated with a doctor at the hospital where she works. Only rating her a six-and-a-half, Darren takes her in, calculating that her presence in his home will prove less tempting to him than an eight or a nine.
Martha’s friend from school days is PE teacher Logan (Calum Callaghan), who also happens to be friends with Darren and a student of his in the art of chat-up. Logan’s new girlfriend, Jenny (Tessie Orange-Turner) is a website designer with a tendency to get too close to her clients. She is the most modern of the four characters. Her relationship with Logan is threatened by an unsatisfactory love life, which leads to role-playing in which she becomes a Belarusian whore.
At its best, Banks’ production has energy and a dash of wit and, at its worst, it has neither. There is a very slight narrative thread running through, but the show plays out like a series of independent, short comedy sketches of varying quality and what emerges is a quartet of thinly-drawn characters who are going through the motions of coupling for no better reason than it is what they believe they are supposed to do. Romance and emotional connections play virtually no part.
Predictable though it is, much of what goes on is mildly amusing, but the play’s overriding problem is that too little of what is has to say is new.
Performance date: 17 July 2019
This review was originally written for The Reviews Hub: http://www.thereviewshub.com
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