Writer: James Woolf
Director: Katherine Reilly
The main event in James Woolf’s new play is that the characters speak in rhyme. Jo and Sam meet in an art gallery in Woking (and yes it rhymes with joking) and over the next 75 minutes their love affair flourishes. However, despite the impressive acting, the commitment to rhyme means that neither character is believable.
Listening to all the end rhymes and internal rhymes is certainly fun, but at times the search for complementary rhyming words means that the story is often governed by what words and phrases are available rather than what convincing characters would do next. Jo and Sam are nicely grounded people, slowly falling in love, but they are undone by having to say things that they wouldn’t say in real life just to get the laugh and the rhyme. It’s a conceit that edges towards the tiresome especially at the play’s end where more serious subject matter is introduced.
Kieran Dee (so good earlier this year in TIF0) and Phoebe Marshall are excellent at delivering the rhyming couplets and they never miss a beat. In Dee’s hands Sam, a policy writer, is a cheeky-chappy sort but while very likeable he lacks depth, and there is little trace of an inner life. Marshall’s Jo, afraid of settling down, is a little more complex, and yet we don’t get a hint of her unhappiness until the end. It’s a reason, perhaps, for her drinking.
All scenes are pretty short, each opening with some amusing self-referential stage directions, but some are more funny than others. The early scenes where they meet in the gallery, and when they talk on the phone are sweetly performed, but the section with the crying baby and the Jehovah Witness is odd and doesn’t help at all in bringing the narrative forward. Are we meant to surmise that Jo is unfulfilled because she doesn’t seem particularly interested in children, or is this looking too deeply into a show that should be admired for its lighter touches and clever word play?
The partnership of Dee and Marshall goes someway to making up for the flatness of the story, and the structure of the play is pleasingly neat. But without a stronger story the rhymes just get in the way.
Runs until 23 April 2022
