FOUR PLAY

King’s Head Theatre

★★½

“tackles some fascinating and thorny issues revolving around queer relationships, but its execution is shallow”

Question: ‘Did you ever sleep with anyone else, during the 7 (and a half) years we were together?’

Answer: I hated A Little Life

End Scene

What? That’s not profund? It just makes no sense.

Jake Brunger’s Four Play, as the name suggests, is about the colliding sex lives of gay couple, Rafe (Lewis Cornay) and Pete (Zheng Xi Yong), with Michael (Daniel Bravo)– the ‘hot one’ – and his partner, Andy (Jo Foster). It opens with Rafe and Pete propositioning Michael to sleep with both of them individually, so they can experience sex with other men, having only ever been monogamous with each other. Psst, don’t tell Andy.

Directed by Jack Sain, Four Play’s first act is promising, especially the allure of the opening sequence, in which the three men dance about with exercise balls. Michael quickly agrees to the proposal of one-time sex, and the play follows the devolution of the intertwined relationships between the four.

The second act, however, disintegrated more dramatically than any of the relationships. The primary diagnosis for Four Play is bad writing. Filtered through cliché, the characters are undeveloped which makes it near impossible to provoke interest in their sex lives and their secret liaisons. I don’t take pleasure in devaluing a play that confronts stereotypes about gay men, but this piece felt symptomatic of some of the most depressing facets of our epoch. Though there is ostensible exploration of the emotional tangle of queer open relationships, Andy – supposedly the injured party – is vapid and uncritical, cloaking ignorance with some worthy diatribe against the apparent pretentiousness of liking Ottolenghi and Chablis. That is one of the alarming facets: anti-pretentiousness. Anti-pretentiousness, in this case, is just anti-intellectualism promenading as social commentary.

The actors do their best with the material. Foster is spritely and contrasts well with Bravo’s aloof composure. Cornay is endearing in his awkwardness, also in contrast to the corporate soullessness of Pete. Set and costume design (Peiyao Wang) are highlights, especially Foster’s outfits. The interior décor is suitably chic and modern, complementing the piece’s tone.

The overriding message of the play, Brunger holds, is to respect your partner and always be honest. But there is no plausible redemptive arc for these characters, and they all remain objectionable. The relationships felt symptomatic of our societal objection to feeling and to difficult emotion in the name of ‘protecting our peace’. Not one of these characters have an engaged conversation: they just talk at each other and leave. No one is changed by the end.

Theatre doesn’t have to be radical or revolutionary, but it should be observational in some way; usually, it observes convention from an unconventional lens – in this case, we have sex, monogamy, and ‘modern’ relationships from a non-heteronormative lens. But it lacks nuance. The rusting away of a woman’s ovaries is casually dropped for humour; Hitler and Nazi uniforms as a kink are mentioned in poor taste; metaphors obscure rather than elucidate. At one point, Andy, with lustre, says ‘Spiders are scary. Terrorism is scary. Cancer is really scary. Monogamy?’ As if monogamy could only be held in opposition to these three wildly divergent examples of scariness and thus be deemed unscary. But monogamy can – and perhaps should – be intimidating, and that’s a fascinating discourse in itself, not to be undermined.

Four Play tackles some fascinating and thorny issues revolving around queer relationships, but its execution is shallow.

FOUR PLAY

King’s Head Theatre

Reviewed on 16th July 2025

by Violet Howson

Photography by Jack Sain

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

REMYTHED | ★★★★ | May 2025

THE GANG OF THREE | ★★★★ | May 2025

(THIS IS NOT A) HAPPY ROOM | ★★★ | March 2025

FIREBIRD | ★★★★ | January 2025

LOOKING FOR GIANTS | ★★★ | January 2025

LADY MONTAGU UNVEILED | ★★★ | December 2024

HOW TO SURVIVE YOUR MOTHER | ★★★ | October 2024

TWO COME HOME | ★★★★★ | August 2024

THE PINK LIST | ★★★★ | August 2024

ENG-ER-LAND | ★★★ | July 2024

FOUR PLAY

★★★½

“an original and interesting show led by two excellent performances”

The 16th of May 2035. 3:37am. A woman has been arrested and brought in for questioning regarding an assault on a man in a bar on Villiers Street in central London, but it is very quickly apparent that this is not a normal interview. Firstly, she does not deny the assault. However, what makes the interview more unusual is that the woman is disabled and is consistently referred to as a ‘vulnerable adult’. Diagnosis is an exploration of the treatment and of societal attitudes towards people with disabilities and the bureaucracy, which should protect them actually harming them.

The woman (Athena Stevens) under question remains nameless throughout the show and is even referred to as ‘S/he’ in the show’s programme. Evidently deliberate, this provides one of the key messages of the show – how society ‘others’ people with disabilities and their stories meaning that they are often left unheard, and their talents left unutilised. Here, she has an unusual gift, claiming that she can see people’s ‘sell-by’ dates and what tragedy will befall them. But he won’t listen.

This undertone is reinforced throughout as our officer (Ché Walker) takes light relief in the messages received from a colleague who is detailing watching foxes from his early morning watch post. He also talks very dismissively of her, stating that she is: “Physically impaired, mental capacity undetermined.”

The other key message of the piece is regarding the dangers of overly bureaucratic procedures and processes. The checks and balances that should protect vulnerable people can really just serve to protect the established order. We see this in a specific scenario. Public Oversight Code 22 (PO-22) is a common feature, an article providing a façade of protecting rights in interactions with ‘vulnerable individuals’ when it is really providing cover for inaction and delays. She thinks it means that she will be heard, whereas he knows it means he won’t have to listen. He says to a colleague: “We just need to log the assault before we can let her go.”

The two main actors are also the writer (Stevens) and director (Walker) of the show, quite fitting that they are the ones to bring their work to life. These elements are carefully woven into the plot and dialogue of the characters, with excellent timing. One can enjoy the irony of the officer verbally detailing the reason for the additional procedural features of this interview while simultaneously showing his impatience with them. The scene is cleverly designed (Juliette Demoulin), with the interview both in front of us and projected onto a screen behind. Slate-coloured walls flank the performance, a familiar sight from any crime drama.

At times, the plot asks quite too much of the audience, straying too far into fantasy. This damages the seriousness and importance of the moral of this story, which do get lost when the storyline flirts with science-fiction. The plot needs a bit more substance to get to its punchline without these ‘jumps’, which do seem to interrupt the flow. Nonetheless, it remains an original and interesting show led by two excellent performances.

FOUR PLAY

King’s Head Theatre

★★½

“tackles some fascinating and thorny issues revolving around queer relationships, but its execution is shallow”

FOUR PLAY

King’s Head Theatre

Reviewed on 16th July 2025

by Violet Howson

Photography by Jack Sain

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

FOUR PLAY

FOUR PLAY

FOUR PLAY

DIAGNOSIS

Finborough Theatre

★★★½

“an original and interesting show led by two excellent performances”

DIAGNOSIS

Finborough Theatre

Reviewed on 15th May 2025

by Luke Goscomb

Photography by Alex Walton

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:

DIAGNOSIS

DIAGNOSIS

DIAGNOSIS

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