A Bright Half Life – King’s Head Theatre, London

Writer: Tanya Barfield

Director: Steven Kunis

Tanya Barfield’s A Bright Half Life is one act of heartfelt, character-driven story-telling that has you invested from the start. The story follows a turbulent romance between Erica and Vicky, who (we eventually discover) first meet in 1980s New York as colleagues in an office.

But our first meeting with the characters is not their first meeting with each other. Barfield’s play is characteristically structured into scrambled snapshots of this relationship, rejecting all sense of chronology and creating a jigsaw puzzle-feel. For less able actors this structural choice might have fallen flat, but in the hands of Susie McKenna and Eva Fontaine it works perfectly. The two are perfectly matched, switching effortlessly from past to present to future and back again with an energy that never drops. Alex Lewer’s lighting design is also vital in ensuring the success of this structure, the conception and execution of which is extremely slick throughout.

When we first meet Erica (McKenna) and Vicky (Fontaine), the play kick-starts with an emotionally charged moment roughly a few years into their relationship. McKenna and Fontaine warm very quickly into the performance, delivering both the big emotionally-driven moments and the light-hearted comic relief which Barfield’s script demands. There are moments of dialogue in the writing that feel more convincing than others, but both actors command the space so well that this is easily overlooked. The characters are repeatedly presented with bumps in the road of their relationship; 1980s New York is a time recent enough to feel relatable on stage but distant enough that homophobia was rife and unapologetic.

As much as you have to appreciate the unconventional structuring of this story, one feature of this is the repeating of scenes or moments from them. This novelty of peppering the same scene three to four times across an hour wears off quickly; if you’ve become invested in the characters then you want to watch what happens to them next, not watch what you’ve already seen.

This is a heart-warming and familiar-feeling love story between two people who are determined to love each other in the face of a variety of obstacles. If you liked Constellations, you’ll probably love this. A familiar-feeling romance packed with heart for a 21^st-century audience

Runs until 1 October 2022