Writer and Director: Aissa Martell
If By Starlight follows Janelle (Kat de Leiros) and Jacob (Adrian Pel), two romantics who meet at a bar after separate tragic first dates and spend the rest of the piece explaining themselves to each other and to the audience, at jarring length. Janelle’s romantic hopes are pinned on a proclivity for astrology; a supposed Mercury retrograde or some sort of alignment of stars being evidence to Janelle that the proverbial tide will change on tonight’s date.
The show is littered with monologues feigning depth, with ornate vocabulary attempting to mask nonsensical metaphors, failing to logically follow from the preceding text – at one point, whilst referencing Janelle’s pet birds: ‘exotic lovebirds often outlive their humans, it must be a sign that this relationship will be good’. What?
Janelle’s opening story about her childhood crush, who she went off after he ate a bogey, resurfaces 11 times as a comparison for practically everything that follows, to the effect of: ‘at least he didn’t eat a bogey’, or ‘at least he’s not a snot-devouring monster’; the joke dies of exhaustion on its second beat. Jacob meanwhile nurses an attachment to vodka martinis that he insists is not a fetish, another weak ‘bit’ drained to death.
Two chairs and a table make up the entire set, and little is done with it to inspire anything meaningful. A mid-show detour sees Jacob disappear and argue with an unseen cat, vying for a laugh that never arrives. Pel’s cockney accent is a little contrived and, at times, the performance as a whole feels under-rehearsed.
Delivery on both sides stays flat long enough to suggest that the company and the writing have more soul-searching yet to do if If By Starlight has a future.
Reviewed on 22 August 2026
Camden Fringe 2026 runs until 30 August
