Writer: Simon Stephens
Director: Demi Leigh
One Minute explores the aftermath of a little girl’s disappearance in London. The action spans the year after Daisy went missing. We meet her mother Anne who flits between hope and despair as she endeavours to navigate her way through a hellish ordeal. We encounter questionable witness Marie Louise, whose airy-fairy demeanour immediately implies she is unreliable. We also follow police partners DC Evans and DI Burroughs who are tasked with the investigation.
Make no mistake, though, this is not a join-the-dots police procedural drama. Instead, we see the detectives (Frederik Lysegaard and Lee Lomas) in various contexts. As well as witnessing the impact the case is having on them, we gain glimmers of who they are when not in uniform. While their back-and-forth banter is believable, we often find ourselves questioning some of writer Simon Stephens’ meandering tangents. For instance, the two talk about their feelings about love and marriage on several occasions. Fine, but without knowing or therefore caring too much about these characters, such conversations fail to really go anywhere.
The same can be said for Imogen Mackenzie’s Catherine. She works at a pub and often refuses to serve Burroughs, who evidently relies on alcohol to numb the pain he encounters through his work. Mackenzie more than delivers with what relatively little material she has to draw from but again we wonder why her character is given more attention than the missing girl and her mother. It’s a real shame we don’t see more of Anne as Reshma Morris so successfully embodies the multitude of conflicting feelings her tortured character is experiencing. She shines during the climax, but this only emphasises her absence in the lead up.
It quickly becomes apparent that form overshadows plot and character here. Stephens presents us with a fragmented assortment of scenes to piece together, but the resulting picture is confused rather than cohesive. Daisy’s disappearance of course summons our interest but as less and less focus is placed on her, our attention subsequently starts to wane.
What are we supposed to take from this theatrical experience? Perhaps it’s a commentary on how life presents us with such unimaginable horrors that are sometimes simply too hard to comprehend or look at rationally. Perhaps it illuminates our human need for contact, while depicting just how insular we can be. It looks at city life, particularly London and how each of us reacts to certain events. One must consider it was written at a time of turbulence. The tremors of September 11 were still being felt and the world had changed indefinitely back in 2003. While Stephens successfully captures the fear and uncertainty, replicated recently thanks to the pandemic and the war, it doesn’t quite resonate as effectively here as it perhaps should.
The scenes are mostly short snap-shots – the lights fading sometimes unexpectedly before we find ourselves in a different location. In principle this should allow for a pacey production, however some scenes are a little too drawn out, whereas others feel as though they have ended too abruptly. Demi Leigh extracts some nice naturalistic moments but overall her direction feels unmoored when a play with such form needs to be somewhat anchored to fully work.
It’s been 20 years since Stephens’ play premiered. In 2003 the relatively unique presentation of a simple story might have felt innovative and compelling. In this case it feels like style over substance and leaves us questioning why it should be revived now. One Minute is a very long hour and a half with this slow burn failing to fully ignite.
Runs until 26 March 2023
The Reviews Hub Score
Slow burn
