Good Grief – Platform Presents

Writer: Lorien Haynes

Director: Natalie Abrahami

Hybrid theatre productions have now been with us for some time and then tend to fall into one of two camps; either they knowingly make a virtue of their theatre origins like the Old Vic’s In Camera series or they try to immerse the audience in the complete experience of the story like a film such as the BBC recording of Uncle Vanya (even though it was filmed on the original set at the Harold Pinter Theatre). Lorien Haynes’ Good Grief streamed by ATG tries to do both and slightly suffers from its indecision.

Holding an unusual wake for recently deceased girlfriend Liv, Adam is left alone at the end of the night with her best friend Cat as they try to celebrate and commemorate her life in the most appropriate way. As the months pass, the pair is drawn together to deal with the aftermath of Liv’s death and their own loneliness, but as something more stirs between them will guilt and shame keep Cat and Adam apart?

In the programme notes accompanying this broadcast, Haynes notes that her 45-minute play was considered too short to produce on stage and there is a thinness to the premise of this microdrama that Good Grief can never quite shake off. The themes are enormous – love, death and self-esteem – yet the short scene structure that takes this two-hander from February to October in the year that Liv died needs a little colouring between the lines to fully capitalise on the budding relationship between Cat and Adam.

There are too many loose ends that hint at a wider landscape in which this drama takes place, including mixed feelings about Liv’s attitudes to life, her many previous lovers and the conflict this sometimes created with her boyfriend. One opaque conversation suggests that Liv’s involvement with a man called Jerry shaped Cat and Adam’s first meeting about which they reminisce, but how these various dots connect is never explained. It leaves a hole in the centre of the drama as the audience wonders whether Liv is a character to admire, and this has direct implications for any investment or disapproval the viewer should feel when her boyfriend and friend get closer.

Director Natalie Abrahami has made some puzzling choices across the visual presentation of Good Grief that takes a realistic approach to some scenes then asks the viewer to use their imagination in the next. Filmed in one location, scenes with a domestic setting like Adam’s kitchen or the pivotal ‘Sad Room’ are played like film scenes as the characters realistically prepare food or pack boxes, while the Ikea car park in Brent Cross is represented by two chairs. And while a real stage or feasible location shoot may have been impossible, Abrahami’s blended approach becomes a distraction, drawing attention to the play’s character and emotional limits.

The enjoyment in this Platform Presents production comes from the excellent central performances and the actors do much to expand the interior life of their characters, developing a believable chemistry between Adam and Cat that builds on their easy relationship to take them through a series of tricky and emotionally-loaded situations as they confront their conflicted feelings.

Sian Clifford’s Cat has a wildness to her reflected in the bright combinations of clothes and amusing one-liners that prevents the tone from becoming too maudlin. Yet Cat is weighed down by a grief that she tries to keep in proportion, something which Clifford presents with real feeling in her character’s frustration as she fights against the attraction.

As Adam, Nikesh Patel presents a level of confusion about appropriate ways to behave as he works through the stages of grief, but where Patel really adds texture is the suggestion that the relationship with Liv was unconventional and sometimes even troubled, suggesting a befuddled innocence to Adam that retains the audience’s sympathy as the months pass.

‘Every time I look at you, I think of her’ Adam tells Cat, a line that neatly summarises the emotional complications that propel Good Grief. Haynes’ play feels like a starting point for something more; the structure is there, it begins and ends in the right places, and the characters are starting to fully form. And while this hybrid production is not quite theatre and not quite film, it certainly suggests what this story might become.

Runs here from 15 February until 15 April 2021