Writer: Nurit Chinn
Director: Maxi Himpe
Bo did alright at high school, went to Princeton, got together with Jean and developed an intense but wonderful relationship. Now they are back living in the small town where he grew up, about to attend a 10-years-later high school reunion and meet up with Ted, who was his best mate, had a less happy educational career, and has just broken up with his high school sweetheart. And now the play is off to the races.
Ted and Bo relive old triumphs, old traumas. Jean asks questions and flirts and feels left out, Bo seems oblivious to any developing feelings between his two friends, and Ted bounces back and forth between smart and stoner and weird and sad.
It is the set-up of a swathe of high-school movies, except the dialogue is very sharp, the performances are very well-judged, and the weirdness and the sexual tension are electric. That’s the first, excellent, 40 minutes of the 60-minute show. Then there’s a serious emotional event that is never explicit but is abusive, then there’s a long, rambling, diffuse passage of voice-over and hard-to-hear high-school reunion fragments, and then it stops. There is so much promise in the sharp dialogue giving a fresh insight into a fairly hackneyed situation, there is so much talent on display in the character work of the three cast members, then it all falls apart. If ever a play needed another pass from the writer, or a radically different direction, it is this one. Two-thirds riveting, one-third mystifyingly unfocussed.
The three actors, Maisie Norma Seaton, Esmonde Cole, and Saul Barrett, are not at all at fault. If they aren’t American, they sound as if they are. They deliver the script’s zingers with precision and energy, they explore the weirder sexual undercurrents with intelligence and delicacy, and they are stranded by the badly undercooked conclusion.
Seeing this much talent floundering is sad. That said, there’s an awful lot of talent there. Rewrite. Try again. It’ll be worth it.
Runs until 1 August 2023
Camden Fringe runs until 27 August 2023
