Writer: Dominic Conneely Hughes
Director: Tara Choudhary
Dominic Conneely Hughes has written an intriguing, slightly mystifying piece that provides spectacular opportunities for his two-person cast to strut their stuff. On the barest of bare stages, in front of a trestle table and two chairs, Ruth Piggott switches mood on a sixpence, surfing the fractured timeline, displaying joy and cynicism and panic and confusion, making it abundantly clear where she is and when she is, cueing the audience with great assurance into the moment of her journey that we are witnessing.
Her fellow actor, Drew Gregg, has a more externalised task, playing four widely differing characters, making each one distinct and comprehensible with subtlety and precision. His toxic police support officer with an over-reliance on the healing powers of Jaffa cakes is particularly treasurable.
Ruth Piggott’s character Hannah hooks up with Oliver on a dating app. Her track record is not very impressive, but after a bit of very nicely played defensive fencing they get on well enough and swap numbers. Then Hannah gets a hysterical angry phone call in the early hours of the morning from an evidently distressed Oliver threatening all kinds of mayhem, then abruptly ending the call and cutting off contact.
She goes to a police station to report her concern, and that takes us into the main body of the play, as officers and relatives question her, disbelieve her, patronise her, accuse her. The actor has to respond to a wide palette of emotions and also switch back to the progress of the date. Ruth Piggott achieves this very impressively.
On the other side of the trestle table, Drew Gregg engages with her in a variety of guises. The play is quite mystifying, the mood changes and Drew Gregg’s cast of subtly differentiated characters is increasingly threatening which is a tribute to Gregg and to Tara Choudahary’s soft touch direction. Some very nicely judged lighting states supplied by designer Charlie Raca, albeit with very limited resources, help the mood shifts.
The play is intriguing but not wholly convincing – Hannah seems to be a suspect while all the police officers refuse to believe there’s a crime to suspect her of, and what we chiefly get is ample cause for Hannah’s paranoia without any conclusion or resolution. What we do have is some tasty acting and direction, and a script that intrigues. That’s a pretty good evening’s worth.
Reviewed on 16 August 2024
Camden Fringe runs until 25 August 2024
