THE PLAY’S THE THING
White Bear Theatre
★★★
“very clever, self-aware and thought provoking”
As the title suggests, this is a play about a play— a pub theatre performance— that we never see. Through three scenes, different characters respond to this play in different ways, so that we’re led to think about the nature of theatre itself. How can theatre (specifically pub theatre) convey convincing truth? How can it be misunderstood? How does communicating through theatre differ from how we communicate in real life?
But despite the big questions it raises, The Play’s The Thing never feels too high brow or overly intellectual. Thought-provoking topics arise naturally from funny and moving conversations between the characters. And clever dramatic irony prompts us to query what we’re seeing. The dialogue reminds us throughout that we’re watching pub theatre about pub theatre. Even the setting is just a bare space with some pub furniture, to drive home the point.
The Play’s The Thing is the work of three writer / directors. But this isn’t a case of too many cooks. Far from it. The interplay of their different perspectives creates a rich and coherent whole.
The first scene, written and directed by Maya Yousif, is a rehearsal for the play. The director tries to conjure a convincing performance out of an actor, and uses increasingly extreme tactics to get what he wants. The writing is naturalistic, casual and funny, getting darker and more intense as the emotions heighten. Andrew Friedman as the director is excellent. His delivery is spontaneous and casual, and he makes the character likeable and trustworthy. At first. But there’s an edginess that becomes more and more creepy as the scene progresses. Rachel Kitts has the challenge of playing an actor who is good but not brilliant, and cleverly shows her trying over and again to improve.
The second scene, written and directed by Rachel Kitts, is set after the pub theatre performance. We meet the writer of the work, and her friends tell her what they thought of it. It’s a scene about communication. The lies friends tell each other, the truths they omit, and how assumptions can be built on misunderstanding. Again, the writing is very naturalistic and humorous, and the characters are vividly drawn. Our sympathies shift between them as the scene progresses. Francesca D’Souza as the writer gives a convincing, nuanced performance— heartfelt, hurt and self-absorbed. Jessica Wendy Murdoch as her frenemy Emma is bold, forthright and prickly. Anthony Nyro as Ben, caught in the middle of the feud, portrays warmth and generosity, which hides a coldness beneath.
These two scenes suggest that truth can be expressed in moments of breakdown, tears and revelation. For these people, trite language and pleasantries must give way to upsetting confessions of inner turmoil. But the final scene, written and directed by Jessica Wendy Murdoch, shows that this sort of cathartic outpouring is really hard to do— absurd, even.
The last scene gives us two audience members who watched the play. They sit in the pub talking after the show. They aren’t actors or creatives, like everyone we’ve met so far. And yet this is the most theatrical scene of the three— heightened and slightly unreal. It has the air of a Victoria Wood sketch, with fast, mannered language and exaggerated characterisation. It’s a comedy about two middle class people who can’t communicate with each other about their own lives, let alone the meaning of the show they’ve just watched. Their attempts to be earnest and explicit are so bound up with what they can’t say— what they don’t know how to say— that the result is unintelligible.
Jacob Freda gives a sympathetic and tender performance as a crestfallen, self-absorbed husband who struggles to understand his relationship— because he doesn’t understand himself. Ella Blackburn as his wife is witty, electric, cutting and vulnerable. The character is always on the attack, and Blackburn makes her varied and fascinating.
The Play’s The Thing is very clever, self-aware and thought provoking. The performances throughout are impressive. So it’s definitely one to go and see, I highly recommend it. But in the end I came away feeling like those two characters in the final scene— not entirely understanding what it was really about. Writing this review has been an exercise in trying to answer that question. And I guess that’s the whole point the production is trying to make. But I didn’t find it as satisfying as I would have liked. Perhaps it’s the shift in tone of the final scene. The emotion and sincerity of the first two give way to artifice and performance (very well and deliberately done, mind you). This emphasises the meta theatre of the piece, and makes the whole thing feel like a stimulating intellectual exercise about art, rather than the exploration of human communication it seemed to be at first.
I expect everyone who goes to see it will come away with their own interpretation, so (like those two final characters again), be sure to schedule plenty of time to debrief in the pub afterwards.
THE PLAY’S THE THING
White Bear Theatre
Reviewed on 20th October 2026
by Benjamin Parsons
