Tag Archives: Katie Posner

Strategic Love Play

Strategic Love Play

★★★★★

Soho Theatre

STRATEGIC LOVE PLAY at the Soho Theatre

★★★★★

Strategic Love Play

“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.


STRATEGIC LOVE PLAY at the Soho Theatre

Reviewed on 7th September 2023

by Auriol Reddaway

Photography by Pamela Raith


 

Previously reviewed at this venue:

Kate | ★★★★★ | September 2023
Eve: All About Her | ★★★★★ | August 2023
String V Spitta | ★★★★ | August 2023
Bloody Elle | ★★★★★ | July 2023
Peter Smith’s Diana | | July 2023
Britanick | ★★★★★ | February 2023
Le Gateau Chocolat: A Night at the Musicals | ★★★★ | January 2023
Welcome Home | ★★★★ | January 2023
We Were Promised Honey! | ★★★★ | November 2022
Super High Resolution | ★★★ | November 2022

Strategic Love Play

Strategic Love Play

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Hungry

Hungry

★★★★★

Soho Theatre

Hungry

Hungry

Soho Theatre

Reviewed – 13th July 2022

★★★★★

 

“sometimes funny, but mostly heart-breaking, and brilliantly told”

 

It seems mad that something so silly as lunch can be so heated and rich in discussion, but it is. Somehow it draws in everything else that’s important: Family, culture, politics, self-worth. Everything can be got at by discussing what you just ate, be it a chicken nugget or an oyster. And in the case of Hungry, it’s both a chicken nugget and an oyster.

Lori, a highly strung chef, hires Bex as a waiter, and from their first day, there’s a pull between them. Both could talk for England, and both are bold and vivacious. But Lori shows her love by wanting to show Bex what she’s missing; all the finer things, “Chicken nuggets are not special, your life is not special. But it should be.” And whilst Bex knows there’s something wrong about this, she struggles to name it, particularly when Lori is so impassioned and enthusiastic.

This is not a story about goodies versus baddies. It’s about the good intentions of a white woman being misguided and patronising; a clash of heritage- both class and race. And, as a white audience member, that makes it both very uncomfortable to watch and very necessary. Because it’s uncomfortable when someone looks you in the eye, and gently but firmly tells you you’re wrong.

Writer Chris Bush has a way of writing dialogue that is simultaneously vernacular and rhapsodic, incorporating the personal with the political, so you never feel the characters are simply mouthpieces for a more important message. The first few scenes feel a bit manic, but the energetic characters can account for that, plus it’s a lot to fit in to 70 minutes, and presumably Bush wanted to get a wiggle on.

Two metal trolley tables act as pretty much the whole set. Slamming together at the beginning of a scene, or moving gently apart, they serve as worktop, kitchen table, bedframe, battleground. With two such strong characters, there’s really no need for much else, and the simplicity of Lydia Denno’s design means that, for example, when Bex starts stamping on crisp packets and throwing crisps around like confetti, it’s all the more affecting.

Melissa Lowe and Eleanor Sutton are electric together, matched in spirit and quality of performance. Their timing is immaculate, interrupting and withholding in exquisite tandem. Both roles are difficult in their own ways: Lowe’s Bex is mouthy and quick-witted, but she’s on the back foot in this relationship, which seems a strange amalgam in theory, but makes perfect sense in this performance. Similarly, Sutton’s Lori is nervous and neurotic, but she holds the power. Her arguments are thoughtful and persuasive, and yet deeply problematic- a difficult balance to pull off without seeming disingenuous.

This isn’t really about food, but food is the perfect vehicle for its message, because it is both universal, and personal; unifying and segregating. In short, it’s complicated and important, as is the story of Hungry, sometimes funny, but mostly heart-breaking, and brilliantly told.

 

Reviewed by Miriam Sallon

Photography by The Other Richard

 


Hungry

Soho Theatre until 30th July ahead of Edinburgh Festival Fringe 3rd-28th August

 

 

Recently reviewed at this venue:
An Evening Without Kate Bush | ★★★★ | February 2022
Y’Mam | ★★★★ | May 2022

 

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