Writer: Nina Fuentes
Director: Robert Monaghan
There’s little new about the boy-meets-girl story in A Million Miles Under Hampstead Heath. Despite a meet-cute on the North London tube station and other scenes in a flat in Hendon and atop Parliament Hill, James and Maya’s relationship could take place anywhere and happen to anyone. But the universal narrative with its strong undertow of sadness proves to be one of the play’s two strengths.
The other is the quality of the acting by George Prentice and Anna Hewitt. Initially, Prentice’s James is irresistibly endearing; awkward and eager when he first talks to Maya about the book she is reading. Hewitt’s Maya is more distant, and it’s hard to fathom why she begins to take an interest in James’s goofiness. In mourning the death of her mother, perhaps she grabs onto him too hastily.
But if the passing of her mother brings them together, another death threatens to pull the couple apart. James isn’t terribly sympathetic to Maya’s grief and doesn’t support her when she quits her job as legal secretary to focus on a career in writing. He’s disappointed she has changed, no longer the woman he met at Hampstead station. He wants stasis.
They tell their story in two ways. The more effective approach is when they relate what has happened in the past tense, looking out at the audience. It becomes clear, a little too clear, who their intended audience may be, but the strategy works well. Other scenes are told in real time, with the characters talking to each other, but the storytelling is not as strong here. For example, when the pair argues on the platform, their lines are full of generalities when examples of ‘bad behaviour’ would better illustrate their differences.
The ambiguous ending is the best part of Nina Fuentes’s play. It acts like another beginning, or at least the beginning of a relationship founded on guilt and failure rather than love and happiness. It feels like a very authentic, if tragic, compromise. It happens every day, and yet this exploration of familiar territory somehow prevents A Million Miles Under Hampstead Heath from treading old ground.
Runs until 26 April 2025
The Reviews Hub Score
Newly familiar
