Cul-De-Sac – Omnibus Theatre, Clapham

Writer & Director: David Shopland

Reviewer: Christine Stanton

“Dead-End Dramedy“

2 / 5

Set in a suburban Cul-de-Sac in zone 6, irate, curtain twitcher Frank and bored, lonely housewife Ruth are not expecting guests on their mundane Friday evening in. But when neighbour Marie pops round with flyers for the Church fête, and Simon comes to deliver a wrongly addressed package, the evening quickly turns into an unexpected social gathering.

Former therapist Ruth (Shereen Roushbaiani) isn’t working currently and spends most of her days regretting marrying Frank (Ellis J. Wells) and moving to the self-proclaimed middle of nowhere (albeit it’s only zone 6!). It’s not hard to see where her regret comes from, Frank is short-tempered and agitated, more focused on the car parked on his driveway than anything his wife (or anyone else) says. Simon (Callum Patrick Hughes) is the local ‘nerd’, while Ruth finds him harmless and somewhat charming, Frank despises him, and despises Simon’s BT advert analysis YouTube channel even more. Simon’s wife had an affair with his brother and he’s never quite recovered. Marie (Lucy Farrett) is skittish, anxious and staunchly religious, though her antics are definitely less God-fearing than she would present to her neighbours. The foursome spend the evening discussing local matters and trying to connect – but the arrival of Hamza (Behkam Salehani) throws another spanner into the works, and things get a lot more serious there on out as secrets are revealed and relationships are tested.

The premise of the four neighbours at an awkward social gathering is very ‘Abigail’s Party’-esque, but the execution is vastly different, and frustratingly, David Shopland’s (very long) narrative never quite hits the mark for humour, drama or intrigue in the same way Mike Leigh’s classic does. The mind-numbingly bland conversations never go anywhere, or lead to anything of much interest, Frank’s fury at a car on the drive, Marie’s desperation for people to attend the fête, or Simon’s running gag of bursting into tears anytime anything remotely close to infidelity is mentioned is all very monotonous and struggles to captivate from very early on in the show.

Bizarre suburban farce (such as Simon taking a raunchy picture on his hosts phone after rifling through his jacket) is combined with dull, everyday experiences, which creates quite a jarring juxtaposition in the storyline, with no real clear identity of how it wants to progress. Although marketed as peeling back layers of Millennial civility – it feels extremely far removed from anything Millennial, instead the whole execution is reminiscent of a bad 70s sitcom. Canned laughter is almost expected at some of the flat jokes or outdated conversations. Having strong characters would help to boost the interactions somewhat, but there is a disconnect between them, all trying slightly too hard to entertain that it loses the believability that is required for such a show. The arrival of Salehani is a breath of fresh air, natural and comedic he adds a well-needed layer to the show, but it still isn’t enough to fully revive it.

Much like the title itself, Cul-de-Sac unfortunately has no real place to go at the end of it. It feels empty, unrelatable and full of boredom, so although an interesting premise, it frustratingly doesn’t live up to expectation.

Runs until 14 June 2025