This Might Not Be It – Bush Theatre, London

Writer: Sophia Chetin-Leuner

Director: Ed Madden

What will it take to stop caring for others? Can the constraints of the system ever be overcome?

These are some of the questions posed by Sophia Chetin-Leuner’s new play entitled This Might Not Be It, debuting at the Bush Theatre. Directed by Ed Madden, this tight three-hander takes over the Bush’s studio theatre to fully immerse the audience into the office lives of temps in the NHS’ Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.

The audience is invited into a standard office space designed by Alys Whitehead, with two desks whose chairs face away from each other. Disordered files of hundreds of patients deck the floor and filing cabinets. The waiting room is represented by a small cut-out elevated above the office, while the carpet creeps up from the floor onto the back wall, accompanied by stationery protruding outwards, indicating that not everything is in its rightful place.

We meet Angela, played by Debra Baker, who is the jaded, middle-aged temp who has been doing the same job for the last 30 years. The status quo is thrown out of whack by the inclusion of trainee temp Jay (Denzel Baidoo), who holds aspirations to become an Occupational Therapist. He is bright-eyed and all he wants to do is help, but his resolve is put to the test when he and Angela begin butting heads.

The play expertly renders the characters with a truthful relatability, brought to life by a set of natural and endearing performances. The third wheel of the set, Dolly Webb’s Beth, is the least baked of the lot. Her role is pivotal to the progression of the story, but some more time with her troubled teenage character, who is sadly maligned by the system, would work well to flesh her out more.

The piece has a wonderful flow to it, capturing both the mundanity of Angela and Jay’s jobs while also highlighting the intensity of workplace disputes that can come back to haunt you later down the track. Max Pappenheim’s sound design is crisp and calculated, with each scene transition hallmarked with rhythmic clicking and clacking of keyboards and printer whirrs. The design of the lights is both clinical and subtle, with small shifts being made to match the tone.

This Might Not Be It is a mirror to our times, forcing an audience to choose whether they will care for others in a system that actively dehumanises them or whether they will fight for a better tomorrow, system update by system update.

Until 7 March 2024