Lost Atoms – Liverpool Playhouse

Writer: Anna Jordan

Director: Scott Graham

The opening night of Frantic Assembly’s Lost Atoms in Liverpool plays to an unusually youthful audience, largely made up of students who know the company’s unique style of theatre from their drama curriculum. The presence of this generation, for whom curating and sharing moments online is second nature, is fitting for a show exploring the unreliability of memory through the highs and lows of an emotionally turbulent relationship.

Jess and Robbie meet by chance in a café but, after a false start, they are drawn together by technology – all very Gen Z. Jess shares her mobile hotspot, Robbie slips away unseen, but fate corrects the error when, late for a train and desperately searching for signal, he discovers her network is nearby. Love blossoms for an unlikely match – he is clingy, likes to stay at home, she’s a wild child, loves a party – and they find love and a degree of cosy comfortability.

But here things go analogue as a relationship retrospective plays out against a backdrop of a floor-to-ceiling wall of filing cabinet drawers that holds the couple’s memory bank and our instant attention. It is a superb set-piece, injecting energy and movement as the pair clamber up and down to rummage the files they have each mentally stored. We wonder if the contents are to be trusted, as they sometimes contradict what we think we know.

A subtle change in lighting alerts us to this shift in perspective though its location in time and space is left to the imagination. Joe Layton and Hannah Sinclair Robinson handle the quickfire script wonderfully, convincing in the vulnerable, tender moments and compelling during the heart-wrenching implosion of the relationship.

Blame is scattered rather apportioned, balancing misfortune against mistake, and making you want to root for the relationship rather than back a favourite. A devastating, mis-sent voice message is another digital milestone and seems to mark the point of no return, only for the final destination to shift again. The conclusion feels like a fudge, then on reflection seems suitably uncertain.

The truth maybe out there but it occupies the hinterland of knowledge, somewhere deep in US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s bewildering realm of knowns and unknowns. The smooth choreography of the pair is remarkable, flowing at times, magnetic at others, switching poles from attraction to repulsion. An impressive two-hander, it is a simple tale of ordinary people, told well.

After a crackling start peppered with funny exchanges, it starts to fizzle out towards the interval but act two catches light and the pace quickens. Frantic Assembly celebrates its 30th anniversary this year with a clever piece of drama that will make you think. How it ends may leave you wondering.

Runs until 25 October 2025