Writer: Michael Wynne
Director: Vicky Featherstone
The pressures of the modern, ever-changing world could become enough to drive many of us to a bout of severe agoraphobia. Michael Wynne’s amiable new family-based comedy explores this possibility through the plight of Megyn, a recent school leaver without qualifications, prospects or ambitions, who locks herself away to become a cuckoo in her grandmother’s nest.
In a town in Northwest England, four women gather for their evening meal at the home of Doreen (Sue Jenkins), who had been widowed four years earlier. Her daughter Sarah (Jodie McNee) teaches at a school in an area of social deprivation and her other daughter Carmel (Michelle Butterly) is a sales assistant at a branch of Boots in a dying High Street. 17-year-old Megyn (Emma Harrison), Carmel’s daughter, sits quietly, barely touching her food, before shooting off upstairs to Doreen’s bedroom.
The women discuss depressing news stories that flash up on their smartphones – international terrorism, climate change and so on – painting a picture of a hostile world outside their cosy family unit. Frequently, their conversations are interrupted by the sounds of ringtones as it becomes clear that their phones dominate their lives. Doreen is addicted to trading on E-Bay, Sarah scrolls down photos of someone that she does not even know, they text each other while in the same house and Megyn sleeps with her mobile phone in her hand. Perhaps, Sarah decides, the only way to make real contact is to turn off the broadband.
Peter McIntosh’s set design, a nondescript living room with a shabby red fitted carpet, provides the perfect backdrop for the family as they devour their takeaway fish and chips supper. Actually, director Vicky Featherstone’s production stops well short of patronising northerners, but Wynne’s writing is patchy in finding the level of piercing wit, drawn from everyday language, that might have flowed naturally from, say, Alan Bennett.
The four performances are consistently engaging, fleshing out the characters as much as the script allows, but, on the few occasions when the audience is asked to invest in them emotionally, the warmth is lacking. At times, it feels as if the comedy needs the women to be played more as outright caricatures, conflicting with the human stories which require them to be played as recognisable real people. Crucially, while concentrating on the social by-products of the internet age, the writer does not find a way to articulate adequately Megyn’s inner turmoil.
Wynne’s play takes aim at a wide range of serious and complex targets, while perhaps fewer would have given it sharper focus. This, together with the play’s comedic approach, means that it amuses but it never really takes flight.
Runs until 19 August 2023
The Reviews Hub Score
Flightless
