STRATEGIC LOVE PLAY at the Soho Theatre

★★★★★

“Miriam Battye’s script is refreshingly honest and bitingly funny”

Boy meets girl. Girl harangues boy about the exhausting state of modern dating. Will girl persuade boy to stay? She has a pitch – settle for each other, and so remove the hellish search for ‘the one’. Can these two really set love aside and hack the system?

This two-hander is a push and pull, with both characters persuading and panicking in equal parts. It’s desperate, tense and raw. When it’s not unspeakably bleak it’s completely endearing.

Miriam Battye’s script is refreshingly honest and bitingly funny. The dialogue sizzles between these two hopeless individuals and the disastrous date comes alive as it spirals into a whirlwind of potential. Katie Posner’s energetic and dynamic direction keep the momentum whizzing along. This is vital. The darkness is always there, but there’s barely a gap between punchlines to process it. The characters are wincingly vulnerable. At times this is almost physically painful, you want to shout at them to stop talking, but the strength of the script and the direction means you’re back laughing with (or, at) them a minute later.

The play is about modern love, and men and women, but it’s also about these two tired and broken people. The characterisation is complex and well developed. She is more than bitter and he is more than a bit basic. Their whole worlds are alluded to, she affirms she’s very successful, but we never find out her job. It is repeatedly, if subtly hinted that he has no friends. There are stereotypes that are explored, but it never feels lazy, they are nodded to in a way which allows the play to become a broader social commentary.

“This play is funny, and unusual and feels extremely modern”

Letty Thomas (Her) and Archie Backhouse (Him) are sublime. Their comedy, chemistry and cohesion are key in making this show a delight to watch. The moment when Her tough mask slips, and she breaks down is executed by Thomas beautifully. It is a moment of true poignancy. Backhouse has particularly good comic timing, and the audience responds well to his baffled nice-boy jokes. However, it is when they work together, sparring and wheedling, that the performances really shine. In observing the easy, and genuinely sexy connection of the characters, it is important to note the role of intimacy director, Robbie Taylor Hunt.

The play is staged in the round, with a table and chairs that revolve on the spinning centre of the stage, lit from above by an overhanging floor lamp. Rhys Jarman designed the set, a highlight of which was the lamp turning into a working tap, filling Thomas’ cup with ‘beer’ while the stage span wildly. The lighting design by Rajiv Pattani does feel a little familiar, we have seen neon lights that flicker with rising tension a few times, but it does underline the tone nicely and it is effective, if not fresh.

This play is funny, and unusual and feels extremely modern. There are questions about power in it, there were moments where if the genders were reversed it would have been deeply uncomfortable, but that is in many ways the point. The play questions the conventions of dating, and love, and gender in an original and sparky way.