Writer: Deane McElree
Director: Sophia Golan
Sophia Golan directs Brief Play About Rage, a one-act play that comes to Omnibus Theatre after a successful run at the Camden Fringe. The production is fast-paced, hysterically funny and pitch-perfect. The three actors and one musician keep the audience on their toes throughout. A motorcycle helmet-clad cellist pulls a bow across their strings as the audience take their seat, and they remain playing throughout the tense production.
Self-titled as an “absurdist comedy”, Brief Play About Rage is set around a visit from Nell (Clare Stenning) to old friend Val (Samantha Begeman) and husband Hugh (Jad Sayegh). Nell, sporting a porcupine-like personality, dives into the action headfirst with insults and confrontations, taking the play into steadily stranger and stranger territory. Just when the audience believes they have gotten an idea of the characters and the likely plot, Stenning changes tack, and the play sails off on another bearing.
Sayegh is unlikeable from the first line. Hopefully intentionally. His character does gain more empathy towards the end of the production, as the only character who remains vaguely in the real world. Sayegh’s character is largely an audience member, there to demonstrate the ridiculousness of the other two. Begeman and Stenning are sensational. Begeman’s personality shift midway through the play is done with superb professionalism, pulling the audience into the absurdity. Think Micheal Corleone in The Godfather, and how he changes from beginning to end. Now put that into a one-act comedy, equal parts Withnail and I and Sartre’s No Exit.
Stenning is the soul of the play, with fantastic comic timing and an excellent ability to make the absurd seem as though it could happen, and is happening. The exit of character Nell some 15 minutes before the end is felt strongly, and the play limps on until the final curtain. This is not just due to the lack of Stenning; writer McElree takes the audience on such a wild journey that it would be almost impossible to return to any semblance of plot or structure. How to end a play that goes everywhere and nowhere? A slightly anticlimactic finish is a more than welcome trade-off for such a fantastic play.
The production is being shown in the delightful Omnibus Theatre, and there is no better place for a play in this weather, with its large, open bar and cafe, and expansive outdoor seating. Brief Play About Rage is nominated for Best New Play and Best Lead Performance at the Fringe Theatre Awards 2025/26.
Runs until 2 May 2026
