The Crumple Zone – Waterloo East Theatre, London

Writer: Buddy Thomas

Director: Helen Bang

In a Staten Island apartment at a Christmas in the late 1990s, a very queer love quadrangle is developing. Out-of-work actor Terry (James Grimm) is in love with his best friend, James Mackay’s Buck, who is sleeping with Terry’s roommate Alex (Jonny Davidson). One slight snag: Alex is still technically going out with his girlfriend Sam, although she’s working on tour and hasn’t been home for months.

Buddy Thomas’s farce debuted off-Broadway nearly 25 years ago, and some technical changes aside – a landline with an answering machine attached, how very quaint – the emotional entanglements still have the potential to resonate. This new revival switches things up a little – in the original, Alex’s absent other half was also male, making this an exclusively male romcom, for example – but some cultural references aside, it’s easy to see why this script might still appeal on paper.

Whether it succeeds is another matter. Thomas’s script is hardly the most original or sparkling, but it does grasp the need for a farce to ratchet up the stakes. Unfortunately, this production starts out at full tilt, with Grimm’s Terry pawing at and climbing over Buck, both actors delivering their acidic barbs at full pelt.

This leaves little room for the comedy to grow, instead dampening the humour and preventing any sense of engagement or empathy with the characters. The frenetic extremities of Grimm’s performance also serve to highlight the blandness of Mackay’s character, as well as question why anybody would tolerate Terry’s behaviour at all.

Davidson’s Alex ploughs a satisfying middle ground, managing to be light and charming while stuck between two such wildly contrasting friends. It is a shame that his key Act I monologue, cataloguing the various calamities of his life as a shopping mall Santa in the run-up to Christmas, lacks comedic content. Any story that results in onstage characters expressing how underwhelming it is will find that sentiment doubled from the audience.

The unexpected arrival of Sam (Sinead Donnelly) threatens to spice things up, which it eventually does once the over-cramped stage thins out, and instead of actors all shouting at each other, we are afforded some breathing space. The quieter moments in which characters can exercise some self-contemplation are welcome relief from all the shouting, and although Thomas’s dialogue doesn’t gain any longed-for moments of originality, one can at least have an opportunity to start empathising with the characters.

If The Crumple Zone had started at that same level before escalating to the mania which pervades throughout, there would be a chance that this production could sail over some of the dialogue weaknesses. As it is, this Christmas-themed comedy is more of a damp squib than a real cracker.

Continues until 22 December 2024