Solitary Things – Courtyard Theatre, London

Writer and Director: Sam Taylor

Writer and director Sam Taylor’s delightful ensemble comedy-drama, Phone, impressed immensely last year with its fresh, finely drawn characters and witty dialogue. His latest piece, Solitary Things, explores, in a distinctly different tone, similar themes: isolation and the absence of communication and social cohesion in modern culture. The outcome here is markedly less satisfying. Set in a claustrophobic room in a rural psychiatric clinic, the piece, which unfolds at a snail-like pace, is populated by personalities drawn straight from the mental health playbook. Laughs are few and far between. The effect is rather like necking a dose of the narcotic tranquillisers that the hospital occupants imbibe so liberally.

Depressed former art teacher Ewan (Ted Walliker), who has a guilty secret and hears voices, spends his days painting watercolours in his secluded room in a distant annexe of Fordwich hospital. The town is the smallest in Britain. Its inhabitants talk in awe of the bright lights and heady delights of nearby Canterbury. One supposes the solitary location is a metaphor for the character’s determination to isolate himself, both from the company of others and from intrusive memories of the incident that led to his presence there. “I’m a private person, … I don’t want feedback,” he tells anyone who will listen.

A complication arises when an apparent power cut hits the rest of the institution. Hospital director Dr Nelson (Perry Brookes on good form, though we never quite get a handle on why his character is so angry at patients and colleagues alike) is away for the morning. Left to her own devices, well-meaning but ineffectual nurse Jane (Lauren Koster), whose tendency to platitudinal therapy-speak includes classics such as “change is a two-way relationship”, suggests that some of the other patients join Ewan in his room.

Jane, who yearns to provide a “shoulder to cry on, an ear to listen, and a hand to hold”, says she wants to keep the patients calm in a room where the lights are on. But really, she has a hidden motive. She wants to force a deeply reluctant Ewan to socialise through a kind of institutionalised playdate. The set-up promises conflict and a critique of psychiatric care and institutional power. The sparks refuse to ignite, though a last-act episode of “share time” between the doctor and patients (the milieu feels more like a cult than a hospital) briefly flares to life.

First up to join Ewan is May (Isabel Lea waits forlornly for a line), who communicates only in sign language. “Is she mute?” enquires Ewan. “We don’t use that word,” Jane reprimands, “she isn’t a television”. Next up is gregarious, garrulous, fantasist Polly (Jessica Garton, in a fetching purple faux fur, struggles to find the character), who claims to be a best-selling author and lives in a liminal space between make-believe and something approaching reality. Polly is, so it seems, grieving a failed relationship with a posh, rich boy called Nigel (“like Icarus, she flew too close to the sun”, we hear), though we are never entirely sure whether anything the girl says is true.

Then there is obsessive-compulsive, paranoid hoarder Howard (Oliver Sebastian gets the best of the evening), whose dad was a soldier and whose siblings have all left him. “Canterbury was never big enough for them”, he says wistfully. Howard’s role seems to be to bring order to chaos. The final member of the institutionalised quintet is aggressively bonkers Patrick (Rufus Hunt channelling the Joker from every Batman film, ever), who is searching for a hug from everyone and whose backstory hints at violence.

Jane decides to get out the paints and brushes left behind by the mysteriously fired art therapist. The group sets about painting pictures. This provides an opportunity for Ewan to emerge from his shell, rediscover his inner teacher, and relearn how to connect with his emotions and with others. The journey is somewhat lacking in opposing forces. Fortuitously, it also provides a platform for Taylor to reveal the quintet’s backstories, none of which are particularly revealing of the inner mental life of the characters concerned.

“In art, as in life, less is more,” Ewan tells his students. Yes, but sometimes more is more, particularly when a writer has 90 minutes to fill. In a character-led drama (there is little by way of narrative here), one yearns for characters drawn less archetypal in manner and for direction with more momentum. “Mental health is flow”, says the bullying Dr Nelson late on in the piece. One supposes he means it is about being present and engaged. It is hard to feel that way about Solitary Things.

Reviewed on 13 June 2025