Review: CUL-DE-SAC, Omnibus Theatre

I grew up in a cul-de-sac. Backing on to a high rise estate one way and the docks the other, it wasn’t quite the middle class enclave of David Shopland’s play, but my parents lived all their adult lives there because, once you’re in - physically, socially, psychologically - it takes a three point turn (at least) to get out.

That’s playing on thirtysomething, Ruth’s, mind. She’s drinking too much sherry (sherry!), not finding much to fill the void left by her abandoned career as a therapist and is continually dealing with a permanently angry husband, Frank. Another dull evening is set slightly off-keel by the arrival of god-fearing Marie with her church fête brochures and nervous neighbour Simon with a misdelivered parcel. 

So far so Mike Leigh, but soon the backstories start to emerge. Ruth and Frank got together in unusual circumstances and those issues are still unresolved. Marie is anxious, a condition made worse when she loses her phone - well, one of them. And Simon is going through a painful separation. Okay, first world problems, but it’s Zone Six 2025 not the DMZ 1955.

This kind of social comedy is really very hard indeed to get right and Shopland, as writer/director/designer has really given himself rather too much to do. There is dramaturg credited, Roann Hassani McCloskey, but tightness and internal consistency is everything in shows like these and this one lacks both key components. This production (including its interval) stretches out to three hours and that proves, unsurprisingly, simply unsustainable for the format. There’s too much repetition, too much foreshadowing that dilutes the reveals and so many inexplicable exits to unseen rooms that it makes Noises Off look like Beckett.

That’s a disappointment, because there might well be a very funny, very poignant 90 minutes dramedy somewhere in the sprawl. The cast certainly make the most of what they have to work with.

Shereen Roushbaiani lends Ruth a quiet desperation with flashes of aggression that she largely keeps hidden. Quite why so resourceful and intelligent a woman has been so incapable of exploring career options - especially online or as consultancy - is never made clear, even after the secrets are spilled. We’re rather shrugging our shoulders rather than scandalised at what she did, its dramatic impact weakened.

As her endlessly anger-displacing husband, Frank, Ellis J. Wells gets a lot of sardonic quips in the first half but is required to pivot significantly after the interval as the play turns from its comedy focus to conversations steeped in the deathless prose of therapy-speak and self-help. I wasn’t buying Frank 2 after getting to know Frank 1.

Lucy Farrett and Callum Patrick Hughes as the mousy Marie and fragile Simon don’t have enough to do. We get that Marie is repressed, but we don’t really explore why, nor what led her to risk everything for Hamza, a fine cameo from Behkam Salehani, a fine cameo whose down-to-earth cynicism is much needed in that earnest last hour. Poor Simon rushes off more often than anyone and one can’t help wondering if it’s because the script has no use for him once we’ve had a few closet jokes early on.

Comedy, especially one that forgoes easy, slapsticky laughs and aims for a gut-punch of a message, is very, very hard to get right. But not quite as hard as Cul-de-Sac makes it appear.

Cul-de-Sac runs at the Omnibus Theatre until 14 June 

Photo images: Kat Forsyth