THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
I will keep this brief as this is a brief play about brevity. This is presented as a Romcom about words, about what we say, how we say it and what happens when we can't say anything, but it ends up more Matthew McConaughey, than Waiting for Godot.
An 85 minute two hander it was first staged in 2015 and has had its own cult success in various festivals (Latitude, Edinburgh). We learn from the programme that it is "frequently studied in post graduate courses and been performed in over a dozen languages".
It arrives in the West End amidst a blaze of glory thanks to the wattage of its two stars, Aidan Turner and Jenna Coleman. Turner, of the Byronic looks, hit the jackpot with Poldark, The Suspect and Leonardo on TV, and a memorable Lieutenant of Inishmore on stage, while Coleman is the much-loved star of Doctor Who, Victoria, The Serpent, The Cry etc. Both are at their peak. The stage door will be busy.
The affability of the two leads and their great chemistry is the key to this as to describe the script as thin is akin to describing the Himalayas as hilly. These two can make audiences gurgle at their banal lovey chatter as only solid gold Hollywood stars could, and that's a feat which shouldn't be underestimated.
Turner plays Oliver, a composer of music jingles who is protesting against the imposition of a new law that limits each person to 140 words per day. Called 'Quietude' it promotes wellness, no less, a nice dig. Coleman plays Bernadette, a lawyer who, initially, is a bit less concerned about it. The law comes in and we witness them trying to adapt, furiously cutting out pronouns and definite articles and embracing abbreviations to keep within the daily limit. Slowly their love affair withers from their inability to express themselves to the full extent that is necessary. And that's it. The idea that such a law would be ridiculously unenforceable is never entertained in Steiner's thought experiment, as I suppose this is a Play of Ideas but in the end what we're left with is a bunch of cute proposals off in search of dramatic purpose or shape.
Director Josie Rourke ably animates the conversations of the gently sparring lovers, and the leads have a wonderful easy physicality to them. Robert Jones' set, a vast concave wall of shelves packed with domestic items, as if in storage, provides some distraction.
It peters out, but not before they give us a few bars of Bonnie Tyler's 'Total Eclipse of the Heart'. Now, that's drama.
