Writer: Safaa Benson-Effiom
Director: Brigitte Adela
The Jermyn Street Theatre’s annual Footprints Festival is a showcase for new writing and emerging theatremakers and, now in its second week, hosts Safaa Benson-Effiom’s drama The Pursuit of Joy which transports the audience to a South American tour to examine the process of releasing personal anxieties and how to live in the moment. While the many stops whizz by, this character-based piece uses staged internal monologue to take its protagonists on a different kind of journey.
At the airport in Peru, three lonely strangers on the same package tour make an abrupt but lasting connection. As they travel through several countries in a month, a bond forms between the threesome but they are all holding back, afraid to share the truth of who they are. Yet, their restless minds eventually force them all to confront what they really need from this holiday.
Benson-Effiom’s 70-minute story creates a series of episodes, a number of points during the 30-day tour, where the audience checks in with sweet but tortured Iona, the gregarious Joan and the phone-obsessed Ardel who quickly become firm friends. And while the creation of the broader geography is limited in Brigitte Adela’s sparsely staged production at the Jermyn Street Theatre with namechecked locations including Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina appearing broadly similar, the specificity of place is evoked well as the group explores a cathedral, stand in the rain and lay on a beach together.
The Pursuit of Joy sets its stall out from the start, giving Iona a nagging inner voice (played as voiceover) that doubts her every decision and undermines her confidence when meeting new people or trying to learn the tango. The presence of those voices ebbs and flows across the early part of the play with Joan also having a couple of internal reflections and Ardel having none at all, but eventually Benson-Effiom gives the characters a chance to tackle their anxieties head-on.
And this is done by personifying those inner voices and creating fantasy conversations that allow the core individuals to metaphorically divest themselves of the emotional baggage holding them back. The production slightly labours the point with the physical unpacking of rags and knotty ropes from their backpacks but the empathy that Benson-Effiom creates for the characters through these interactions is very skilful, creating a strong audience investment in the outcomes for all of them by the end of the show.
Antonia Layiwola captures Iona’s timidity and the slightly ragged emotionalism of her exhausting self-doubt which makes her stronger emergence as a more confident companion quietly compelling. Razak Osman’s Ardel is highly-strung and obsessed with his phone for reasons that later become clear, but Osman also draws out a greater attentiveness to new friends and a sensitivity that also moves his character forward, while Tia Dunn’s Joan is much harder to pitch, a TV presenter-level of endless enthusiasm that hides a more sombre interior life that Dunn digs into.
While The Pursuit of Joy doesn’t really have any overarching takeaways and could perhaps space out the fantasy sequences a little, Benson-Effiom has created three warm and entertaining characters who you hope will have finally found what they were looking for.
Runs until 27 January 2024
