Oh, how blind we can be to other people’s circumstances when they don’t align with ours. An hour before her wedding, Charlotte meets Elle for the first time. “You won’t have to call me mum or anything,” she jokes. Richard, Elle’s dad and Charlotte’s future husband, is marrying Charlotte, who’s the same age as Elle. Now the daughter has shown up to prevent this disaster from happening. Jitters starts as a comedy and quickly spirals into a precise examination of class privilege.
Charly Clive and Ellen Robertson present an exquisite piece of theatre. The caustic irony that introduces the observational satire gradually becomes a battle of self-preservation. Elle intellectualises everything, from her relationships to societal dynamics, but she can’t see how her entitlement has shaped her. She looks down on Charlotte, thinking the young woman with a first-class honours degree in psychology is “inane and superficial.”
A product of their contrasting upbringings, they take turns in having a go at one another. Clive’s delivery, which is very matter-of-fact and perhaps slightly tactless but never malicious, clashes with Robertson’s affected and emotional reasonings. No matter who you agree with, it’s impossible to deny that they both make a lot of thought-provoking points. Growing up in two different realities, one truths runs parallel to the other. What they don’t realise as they discuss tradition and progress is that they’re both shackled by capitalism. They’re just trying to survive.
The play delights in its ambiguities. Neither character is wrong, yet they’re both somewhat problematic in their own way. They’re complex and real, yet they become the universal representatives of a broader social discourse. The script succeeds in avoiding any kind of forceful rhetoric, opting for dramatic subtlety and lingering in the unsaid and lateral. Enthralling in pace and deliciously provocative, this a remarkably accomplished project.
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