Writer: Eleanor Tindall
Director: Emily Aboud
First seen in a sold-out run at the Bush Theatre’s Studio space in late 2024, Eleanor Tindall’s genre-defying Tender transfers to the venue’s main house in a recast and, what the show’s blurb describes as, an “upscaled production”. Part rom-com, part magical realist body horror, part coincidence-heavy thriller, there are hints here, too, of a queer coming-of-age story.
Nadi Kemp-Sayfi, so good as the nefarious, vengeful Mary in the Regent Park Open Air Theatre’s recent Sherlock Holmes, plays barista Ivy. Living a happily unhappy life with her boyfriend, Max, she works at the kind of vastly overpriced, bohemian coffee shop that many of us would cross the road to avoid. How she keeps her job is a slight mystery, one of many in the piece, as she has a habit of freezing in mid-sentence, zoning out, and having blood ooze out from her mouth.
We do not actually see much of the blood, at least not till late on, though when we first meet Ivy she is washing her hands clean of Kensington Gore, something of an urban Lady Macbeth, telling us of her teenage history of self-harm. What blood there is collects in a silvery, recessed square pool at the centre of Alys Whithead’s cream-and-yellow set, destined to be subsequently trodden into the carpet. It is, one supposes, a metaphor for the woman’s repressed trauma and queer desire. “No one can see the holes in my body. I’ve hidden them; it’s like a magic trick”, she tells us. It must be a nightmare for the stage crew to clean after each performance.
Amewudah-Rivers’ lonely loner Ash, who has recently moved into a studio flat in which one wall thumps incessantly, as if someone or something is trapped behind it, is traumatised, too. She is being stalked by her jealous, possessive, possibly violent ex-fiancé Cas, whom she ditched at the altar, much to his chagrin. Cas is a butcher who, when he is not sending unwanted yellow lilies to Ash, has a habit of handing out free cuts of venison and beef. Bloody flesh, its decay and its consumption, sexually and metaphorically, is a recurring motif throughout the play.
Ash has stopped dating men and passes her time drinking too much, watching TV detective dramas, and shagging random women she meets at a club night called “Aphrodyki”. En route to such a rendezvous one evening, she encounters Ivy, who stops her for a light and then disassociates into one of her sanguinary zone-out moments. Not your traditional meet-cute, but here the piece shifts tonally into full-on rom-com mode.
A drive-by meet at the coffee shop leads to a burgeoning friendship and, in turn, to a comedy-filled drunken date while Max is away on business (“I open my mouth and swallow his absence, feel it fill me up”, Ivy says, carnivorously). Tindall’s ‘will-they, won’t they’ dialogue fizzles with joyously observed comic misunderstandings, naturalistic bickering and cross-talk, and unspoken lust. Since this is slow-burn stuff, we must wait until two-thirds of the way through for the first kiss.
When the women finally make love, in a steamy, beautifully choreographed dance sequence set to what sounds like a German techno tune, it is with all-consuming passion. The performances are pitch-perfect and the chemistry between the two impresses. Kemp-Sayfi delivers a vulnerable, needy, traumatised yet brave Ivy, whose journey to coping with trauma and understanding her sexuality is undermined from within. Amewudah-Rivers’ gutsy, punkish Ash barely conceals a well of loneliness. Microphone in hand, she delivers the roles of Cas and Max with enough differentiation to avoid any obvious confusion about who is saying what.
With a romcom, there must be a block to love. The block could have been Ivy’s repressed trauma, confused sexuality, and history of self-harm, but Tindall adds a complication by revealing an unanticipated pregnancy. There is also an unexpected historical connection between the two women, one that lends the piece a noirish thriller tone. These tonal shifts require quite a bit of suspension of disbelief, given the series of narrative coincidences that must be accepted as backstory is revealed. “Oh, for fuck’s sake” Ivy says to Ash at one point. You may find yourself saying the same thing, sotto voce, as the final serendipitous (or otherwise) plot fortuity is revealed.
Is the obstacle between Ivy and Ash simply too big to overcome? As with the rest of the piece, Tindall is determined to go her own way, but the ending, accompanied by much pulsating of Ash’s apartment wall, satisfies. There is an awful lot in Tender, perhaps too much. The emotional intensity of the love story is always at risk of being lost amid the surreal body horror. But you will remember and root for Ivy and Ash, flawed as they are.
Runs until 1 August 2026
