★★★★

“This is a jaunty and compassionate production”

The confetti thrown in good cheer remains on the stage long after the wedding is over and the marriage has fallen apart in writer Chris Bush’s personal exploration of otherness and identity.

The reason for the break-up is not a dark secret revealed. Harry (Fizz Sinclair) has never hidden her yearning to escape her male body and Jo (Jade Anouka) – as a place-holder response – has always declared an attraction to women, so what’s the problem?

The writer calls on her own experiences coming out as trans to inform a script rich with frail humanity, grief and laughter.

One of the joys of director Ann Yee’s production is the four-strong chorus (Danielle Fiamanya, Laura Hanna, Beth Hinton-Lever and Serena Manteghi). They provide a sumptuous cacophony of well-calibrated, well-meaning voices, while occasionally bursting into snippets of siren song.

They become the friends who judge-don’t-judge the former golden couple. They are the bumptious official who can’t understand why the paperwork doesn’t tally, the fertility doctor with grim news, the HR woman tiptoeing around preferred toilet arrangements.

With a brisk and delightful energy, these vignettes of love, confusion and bureaucracy spill and elide and crash into one other. At pace, Jo goes crazy, drops out, and finds new love up a mountain with Gabby (a hoot, as played by Amanda Wilkin). Harry drifts aimlessly in a twilight world, not one thing or another.

On a rare trip out Harry is harassed by a man at a railway station. She is ill-equipped to cope, having no hinterland, and feels the experience “violating and validating”. Her girlfriends ask why she would opt for all that, the burden of the female sex, as if it were a lifestyle choice. Even then, Harry can’t join them on a protest march against gender violence because it’s not her story. Meanwhile, her exasperated mother (Jackie Clune) suggests she might like to switch back for a family wedding because “it’s not all about you”.

Jade Anouka and Fizz Sinclair perform wonders in their roles. Anouka is a bundle of nervous energy – and a devil on the dancefloor – while Sinclair carries a certain pained stillness, facing upheaval with the stoicism of necessity.

The end of the first act leaves both partners facing monstrous change. Jo is reluctantly pregnant and Harry about to pursue an irreversible course of hormones.

The beginning of the second act goes somewhere else entirely. They become literal monsters. We are in a fever dream cocoon where the misfits come to resolve themselves.

In a somewhat jarring sequence, Jo becomes a robot with a baby-filled silver cloche for a belly. She is alien to Gabby and to herself. Harry, thrashing in the shallows, is a fish-woman, caught in the net of some 18th century natural philosopher and put on show for the gawpers and prodders. While visually striking, it is an odd excursion, and we particularly feel the absence of Anouka’s jittery powerhouse presence. When they return to themselves, it’s a relief.

This is a jaunty and compassionate production, brilliantly designed and lit (Fly Davis and Anna Watson) and elevated by crisp direction and staging. The cast captures the glorious mess and majesty of change with impish relish and the production does an important job giving character to a story frequently lost to ranting headlines.

Chris Bush says this play has been a decade in the making and a lifetime in the preparation. Fortunately, no-one else has to wait that long.

SECOND BEST

Riverside Studios

★★★★

“Butterfield navigates the journey with a fearless and faultless performance”

Much has been made in the media recently of Asa Butterfield’s stage debut. In interviews he has said that theatre “has always terrified” him. We get the impression that this is genuine, rather than a false modesty. Having made his name in “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas” at the age of ten, he went on to play the lead in Martin Scorsese’s “Hugo”, before his major break in the Netflix series, “Sex Education”. Yet he is sufficiently aware that standing in front of a live audience is a completely different ballgame. Especially when you are the only one on stage for the whole hour and a half. Any fears we (or Butterfield for that matter) may have had about this inaugural performance are instantly driven away. “Second Best” is a wonderfully stylised, one-man, one-act play by Barney Norris in which Butterfield commands the stage with a natural comfort and ease, and a sparkling charisma that keeps us hanging on his every word.

Adapted from David Foenkinos’ French novel (translated by Megan Jones), it tells the story of Martin – the (fictionalised) boy who lost out to Daniel Radcliffe on being cast as Harry Potter in the film franchise. Although a specific narrative, it is immediately relatable. Who hasn’t wondered what might have happened if things had turned out differently? That ‘different life I once almost had’ as Butterfield’s character states. That is the crux of the piece. Quite a simple premise, but it is wrapped in layers that are peeled away by Butterfield as he paces the stage, making sharp turns through Martin’s backstory in a seemingly haphazard fashion.

As we enter the auditorium, Butterfield is already there. A lone figure in black, strikingly prominent against the stark white backdrop. Fly Davis’ set is initially a puzzle. A damaged corner-shop rack of crisps, a camera tripod, television set, large packing crate, empty picture frames and a hospital bed high up on the wall. Martin sets the scene. We begin in the present, in a hospital waiting for the results of his and his partner’s three-month scan. But Martin’s mind cannot focus on the image of his child-to-be. Instead, it is being dragged back to into his past – a life of things he didn’t do. A sometimes-traumatic journey. Honest and brutal yet funny and sympathetic as Martin pieces himself back together again. Non sequiturs are strategically placed throughout the script, teasing us until their meaning smacks with a startling clarity. Michael Longhurst’s skilful direction makes inspired use of the props and set pieces, and all the while Butterfield navigates the journey with a fearless and faultless performance.

The narrative is, in fact, more about Martin’s relationship with his mother and, particularly, his father. A stepfather casts a dark shadow too. We follow Martin from school, through to his early film auditions. We commute with him from England to France and back after his parents’ divorce. A vertigo inducing scene takes us into hospital where he was briefly sectioned. And eventually to the party where he met the love of his life – and his saviour. All with stroboscopic shifts from the dark to the light. And never before have tuna sandwiches carried such tear-jerking poignancy. As the conclusion approaches, we do get a whiff of self-help therapy. In Martin’s words, it is ‘not the story of how I came second, but the story of how someone put me first’. But in Butterfield’s hands we are spared any trace of sentimentality. What he replaces it with is tenderness.

In real life, Butterfield narrowly missed out on being cast as the new Spiderman in 2015. The part went to Tom Holland. But he is philosophical about it and has no regrets. Had his story played out differently, though, he might not be here on the stage as his fictional counterpart, Martin – which, for us, would be a big regret. “Second Best” shows us that ‘the other’ life might not be as glittering as it looks. There’s plenty to think about, but what doesn’t need much contemplation is that this sharply insightful play is rendered a must see by Asa Butterfield’s bold and brilliant performance.

OTHERLAND

Almeida Theatre

★★★★

“This is a jaunty and compassionate production”

OTHERLAND

Almeida Theatre

Reviewed on 20th February 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Marc Brenner

Previously reviewed at this venue:

OTHERLAND

OTHERLAND

OTHERLAND

SECOND BEST

Riverside Studios

★★★★

“Butterfield navigates the journey with a fearless and faultless performance”

SECOND BEST

Riverside Studios

Reviewed on 3rd February 20245

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Hugo Glendinning

Previously reviewed at this venue:

SECOND BEST

SECOND BEST

SECOND BEST