Tender – Bush Theatre, London

Writer: Eleanor Tindall

Director: Emily Aboud

A plot-heavy thwarted romance, Eleanor Tindall’s new play Tender, which premiers at the Bush Theatre, is a study of millennial anxiety in which both characters emerge from coercive relationships that make their own path to romance far harder to navigate. Written to be performed as either a two or four-actor piece, director Emily Aboud opts for a duologue, creating plenty of intimacy in the small studio space, however, while Ivy and Ash are sympathetic, the surface-level characterisation makes pacing this will-they-won’t-they drama tricky.

With a meet-cute outside a nightclub followed by another chance encounter in the expensive bakery where Ivy works, her initial encounters with Ash struggle for traction as both women hold back despite an obvious desire for one another. But both have relationships with men that prove difficult to extricate themselves from, and that continually intrude on their brief time together, especially when they discover they have far more in common than they realise.

Tender spends a little too long establishing its scenario and drawing out the circularity of Ivy and Ash’s connection. They meet repeatedly in the first part of the play and speak about the same things, yet it all ends the same way, with Ivy behaving aggressively and the conversation ending abruptly. At one point, Aboud even employs a movement piece during a more successful date with the would-be-lovers still not quite finding one another. With less than 90 minutes to play with, Tindall spends too long on this repetitive cycle without fully investigating its causes beyond the high-level expectation of ‘bad men.’

The play is also predicated on a remarkable and, increasingly unlikely, set of coincidences. Most romcom is to an extent, but the developing plot relies too heavily not just on Ivy and Ash meeting unexpectedly but also on the meshing of their lives to a far greater extent than the other actual realises. The major difficulty is not so much the suspension of disbelief, although it pushes at credibility. It is that this becomes apparent to the audience long before the characters reach understanding, and we are waiting for them to catch up, adding to the pacing problems across this piece.

There are really good things here, too, and the focus on anxiety or trauma from past relationships, as well as the exploration of romantic pressures to be with someone and perform a role for a partner regardless of the individual’s own wishes, are all strong elements for drama to explore. Tindall’s mix of acted scenes and separate narration from both Ivy and Ash is also well managed, creating the dual perspective that adds depth and variety to the story, an opportunity to explore how individuals come across to one another and what they think is happening.

It is just a shame that too little of the play’s running time is invested in deeper characterisation. Tindall gives us some names, jobs and emotional responses confined to their romantic and sexual lives, but almost nothing about Ivy and Ash beneath that. And with Ivy’s dismissive behaviour, it is hard to understand why Ash is so attracted to her, certainly in the same twenty-first-century world of social media and dating apps where there is so much choice. Nadi Kemp-Sayfi and Annabel Baldwin create enjoyable performances, but the production never finds a convincing answer to why these two people really belong together and why the audience should root for them.

Runs until 21 December 2024