Writer: Martin Blackburn
Director: William Spencer
Love it or loathe it, there’s no party like Eurovision and the Union Theatre’s latest production, the premiere of Martin Blackburn’s Nul Points! Has been timed to coincide with UK’s hosting duties. Set across a decade in the lives of a group of drama students, the quirky contest is the backdrop to their lives but while filled with facts and trivia, this conventional story of a friendship group doesn’t use its Eurovision links as effectively as it could.
Josh hosts a Eurovision party at his flat every year, inviting novice friends Daz and Kat to join him. When their 2012 party is accidentally interrupted by an unexpected guest, the lives of these characters remain entwined for the next 10 years. Reuniting annually in May to watch the competition together, the group reflect on their lives as careers are established and love is won and lost, but nothing in life is quite what they hoped it would be, except Eurovision.
Nul Points! has a lot of content, with four quick-fire scenes in Act One that takes the characters from 2012 to 2015 before leaping to 2022 with a long, confrontational scene that dominates Act Two. Blackburn’s writing has a tendency to tell rather than show and the annual reunion structure he has chosen means that characters must fill in the gaps for the audience in between, explaining what they have achieved, lost or experienced in the time that has elapsed. It is a style that quickly loses dramatic momentum, however, as the five characters recap things for the audience’s benefit that, as close friends, they would already know about each other.
The broad sitcom style of Nul Points! means that while Josh, Daz and Kat in particular talk about their achievements and failings, the characters themselves barely develop. There is little insight into their emotional lives, they behaviour at 32 as they did at 22 and there is little sense of jadedness or maturity as their circumstances evolve. There are conversations about fame, selling out, getting and losing work and a carousel of relationships but it’s difficult to define what Nul Points! is really about.
Blackburn’s two Act play is though incredibly witty, savagely so at times with jokes about Lindsay Lohan and Princess Diana inducing a few gasps. The play is full of innuendo which lands well while the character of Josh’s mother, Gina (Adèle Anderson), is hilariously blunt if a little cliched. Some of that early energy fades in William Spencer’s production, the laughs further apart as the story gets lost in its character dramas about long-held grudges.
Kane Verrall’s Josh is always the artist and has an elaborate enthusiasm for Eurovision, although a superfan would never allow his guests to talk over the performances. Marcus J. Foreman has little to work with as Daz whose early success sours as his personal life becomes more complex while Charlotte East as Kat has a natural stage presence, but the role never quite connects a surface engagement with ‘woman’ issues including being single in your 30s, #MeToo and being expected to facilitate the lives of her male friends.
This might work better as a tighter and shorter one Act piece and while the text is peppered with song titles, entrants and fan knowledge, it is a shame not to integrate the structure of the competition or its legendary performances more clearly into this show. Its humour saves this from nul points but as Blackburn’s play unfolds, Eurovision itself takes a back seat.
Runs Until: 20 May 2023
