KINDLING
Park Theatre
★★½
“sets up an interesting space for boundaries to be transgressed”
Five perimenopausal women trek into the Welsh woods to scatter the ashes of their mutual friend Mei, an all-too-young victim of cervical cancer. Each knows her from a different stage in her life – there’s a friend from nursery, one from university, from work, from her children’s school, and her sister-in-law. They are as different from each other as the contexts in which they met Mei, but predictably come together in the night of camping and carousing that makes up most of director Emma Gersch’s ‘Kindling’. Equal parts chaotic and joyful, this play fails to live up to its promising premise.
A thick layer of leaves and a few saplings fill the stage, with a large photograph of an autumnal forest as its backdrop. Abi Groves’ set is effective while not exactly imaginative, though it comes alive as the disjointed group of women flood the scene with their belongings – bags of distinctly varying types, a camping chair, string lights, a single tent, the all-important urn perched on a tree stump. The stage feels rather full, though this is not down to the set so much as the almost constant clumsiness that inexplicably plagues the characters that inhabit it, who are always stomping about, sighing, and fussing with wine glasses and blankets and maps.
Dissimilar as they are, the characters are all restless, big personalities, each based on time-honoured archetypes: vegetarian hippie Cathy (played by a particularly funny Scarlett Alice Johnson), savvy lesbian Jules (Stacy Abalogun), perfect housewife Jasmin (Rendah Beshoori), posh party girl Sue (Ciara Pouncett), and frazzled mum Rose (Sarah Rickman). Refreshingly, and true to the ethos of Ladybird Productions at large, we meet these women at a somewhat later age than we have encountered them before, but they are familiar faces nevertheless. The actors have good chemistry, but why the late Mei ever thought that sending these characters on a commemorative trip together would turn them into friends remains a mystery, as (despite what the plot tells us) they fail to genuinely connect in spite of their obvious differences.
One issue that contributes to this is the aforementioned restlessness that runs through the play, and finds its source in Sarah Rickman’s script. Not only are there almost constantly five women on stage at the same time, who rarely actually sit down to have a chat altogether, there is also a flurry of things happening: there’s a big thunderstorm, Rose almost chokes to death and later finds her dog in the woods, Jasmin gets shat on by a bird and accidentally kills it, and Mei’s ashes end up in someone’s hair and then everyone’s coffee, among other things. Kindling bundles all the worst camping horror stories you’ve ever heard into an hour and a half and, as such, becomes frustratingly one-note, with little room for the different emotions grief conjures. Additionally, many of the play’s jokes feel disconnected from its subject matter and some of the dialogue borders on cliché (‘But my nails!’, Jasmin exclaims, and ‘You know what, I’ve not laughed like this in ages’, says Jules).
That being said, the second act was much more streamlined than the first. The group’s conclusion that Mei was perhaps a bit of a narcissist was an interesting twist, though I wished that this realisation had dawned upon her friends more gradually and naturally than it did, and that the potential consequences of this insight had been made to feel more urgent.
In taking the bizarre premise of an ash-scattering, rowdy camping trip, Kindling sets up an interesting space for boundaries to be transgressed, unlikely friendships to be forged, and breakthroughs to be had. But unfortunately, its potential gets lost in the chaos.
KINDLING
Park Theatre
Reviewed on 27th October 2025
by Lola Stakenburg
Photography by Holly Darville
Previously reviewed at this venue:
LEE | ★★★½ | September 2025
(GOD SAVE MY) NORTHERN SOUL | ★★ | September 2025
VERMIN | ★★★★ | September 2025
THE GATHERED LEAVES | ★★★★ | August 2025
LOST WATCHES | ★★★ | August 2025
THAT BASTARD, PUCCINI! | ★★★★★ | July 2025
OUR COSMIC DUST | ★★★ | June 2025
OUTPATIENT | ★★★★ | May 2025
CONVERSATIONS AFTER SEX | ★★★ | May 2025
FAREWELL MR HAFFMANN | ★★★★ | March 2025
