Writer: Nick Payne
Director: James Haddrell
If you promise to love someone for the rest of your life, especially when they’re about to go off to war, and then you don’t, it’s pretty awkward if you then keep running into them. The underlying premise of Nick Payne’s 2011 play One Day When We Were Young, revived at Park Theatre, makes for a rather laboured two-hander with James Haddrell’s new production failing to address the meandering conversations and intangible attraction between young lovers who find they have little to say to one another when they meet again in middle and old age.
Spending a scandalous last night together in a Bath hotel before conscript Leonard heads to his Second World War regiment, he and Violet struggle to find the intimacy they crave. Promising to wait forever for his return, their next meeting in the 1960s proves uncomfortable when it turns out Violet has moved on, and coming together once more in the 1990s to look back on their lives, can they ever admit how they felt?
Payne’s play is built around a strong central scene, the reunited former lovers both with a slightly different agenda at their wintry playground meeting, and Haddrell’s production makes much of this interaction, noting the cross-purposes that underline why their love was unsustainable. It also picks up on the tones of disappointment, bitterness and guilt that affect Leonard and Violet in this moment but, like all scenes in this very short play, it is overwritten and repetitive. The ache that Barney White’s Leonard feels is well matched by Violet’s refusal to betray her new life for something as sentimental as first love which Cassie Bradley holds onto in the shaping of character in this scene.
It’s a shame that the bookended scenarios lack any of that drive, and Haddrell’s revival fails to inject any renewed vigour in these unsatisfying and unrevealing conversations. Too many loose ends and unspoken emotions intend to offer tragedy and comment on missed opportunity but the play feels too drawn out with too little substance to make us invest in the supposed lifetime love of two people who would rather talk about Jaffa Cakes, stairlifts and queues to buy chocolate than any of the massive events they face.
Bradley has the best of it, much more to dig into with Payne providing a lot of detail about Violet’s life across the 50 years of the play and her Violet is content with the direction she has chosen. White is given little to do with Leonard however, other than pine and talk about late trains which he does with feeling. Yet, there are no clues to the character, nothing about his experience is revealed and while both actors do their best, particularly with the detail of ageing up their characters, the material gives them little reward for their efforts.
Runs until 22 March 2025
