Writer: Vaughan Evans
Director: Harry Saks
Reviewer: Christine Stanton
“Leftfield Plot, Unfulfilling Conclusion“
2 / 5
~This review was originally written for The Reviews Hub ~
Steve and Val have a tumultuous relationship – he’s misogynistic, homophobic, and his drunken abuse of Val is becoming more frequent. Neighbours Elaine and Richard despise Steve but equally struggle to speak out against him due to his domineering nature and end up socialising with him far more than they’d like to.
The four personalities of the characters are all extremely different – Steve (Ty Nicholls) is your typical lager lout, Val (Emma Riches) is his ditzy trophy girlfriend who wants a better life but, with only one GCSE in dance, struggles to better herself. Next door, landlord and social worker Elaine (Karen McCaffrey) is a fervent feminist, passionate about free speech and fed up with the ‘woke agenda’ and ‘cancel culture’. Her tenant Richard (Jonny Hosking) is extremely liberal, in the midst of organising a protest against a senior lecturer at his university because of her stance on trans rights. The four strong, polarising personalities make for great opportunity in the script, which has lots of glimmers of intriguing moments and potential but at many points falls short of really excelling due to not having a clear agenda.
The show takes place within the front rooms of both neighbours, simply and effectively signalling the location change with a simple photo frame that gets flipped throughout to change each scene. Elaine and Richard are both well-educated, discussing their interests politely, but they quickly fall into an argument when they start debating politics and the rally that Richard is organising, which Elaine is horrified with.
Concurrently, Steve has managed to recruit Richard onto his darts team, often popping around for a quick drink and not quite noticing that neither of them wants him there. It seems to be setting up for an interesting narrative, but it is the end of the first act where the script starts to go completely leftfield, and it doesn’t seem to know what it wants to say or how it wants to be said. Steve randomly and unexpectedly flashes Elaine when Richard leaves the room – she barely reacts, which dilutes the action, and brushes it off as ‘typical Steve’ when she relays the story to Richard. After this, it isn’t mentioned again, and although it helps to further embed the type of person Steve is, it completely undermines what happened.
The second act, is just as bizarre, which actually manages to keep the interest of the audience because the ridiculousness of the plot starts to become like a car crash you can’t take your eyes off. It begins with Val making a completely unexpected move on Richard, which leads to an illicit ongoing affair. The story gets crazier and the utterly bonkers conclusion that comes out of nowhere doesn’t fit any of the characters and provides an infuriatingly unfulfilling resolution where there is zero comeuppance or real acknowledgement for vile acts. It feels as though writer Vaughn Evans wanted to throw in as many ‘shock factor’ moments and ‘teachable lessons’ as possible that they ended up losing sight of the storyline and overall characterisations as a whole.
Another one of the disappointments with the script is that its desire to define the various terms and reference points is too frequent, which comes off as unnatural within the conversations between characters. Rather than having a normal chat, they over-explain things like the controversy of JK Rowling, what a TERF is and what the true meaning of being ‘woke’ is. These unnatural dictionary definitions thrown into conversations could be better worked into the writing without it feeling like a children’s school lesson or forced in footnotes.
If nothing else, this is at least a unique show and one that will remain memorable – even if not for the right reasons.
Runs until 20 April 2024
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