Review: FOUR PLAY, King's Head Theatre

Sitting in the grand tradition of the ‘partner swap’ drama, 2015’s Four Play spoke to the LGBTQ+ community post-marriage equality, grappling with the desire to fit in in heteronormative suburbia versus the freedom to explore sexuality in a way that feels authentic. Now, in a new production directed by Jack Sain, it feels richer and more ambiguous than ever.

Herein lies a tale of two couples in the same queer social circle, wavering on the brink, who ultimately aspire to one another’s approach to being in a long-term relationship: Rafe and Pete find themselves in a rut after being together since university, and plan to (separately) sleep with Michael, who’s in a teetering open relationship with Andy (played in this production by non-binary performer Jo Foster, which leads to some interesting new readings of the play’s ruminating on desirability in the queer community).

What follows, predictably, is a lot of upset in everyone’s relationships, but also an exploration of what it means to love a partner. Can Rafe’s idealism balance out Pete’s barely suppressed longing? Or could non-monogamy have been the answer for them all along?

It’s billed as a comedy and jokes do abound, but where the show shines is in the probing of what is left unsaid – this is a cast (Foster, Lewis Cornay, Zheng Xi Yong, and Daniel Bravo) very comfortable sitting in awkward silences, whether it’s at a dinner party or on a one-night stand. When the bombshells of desires long-repressed do drop, the gasps are audible.

Occasionally, all the psychosexual complications of the foursome’s arrangement could have been shown, rather than told, to us. I wonder whether, in reality, the promiscuous Michael (who’s slept with many more people than he’s told Andy about) would have such lucidity regarding how unfulfilling his various flings have been, and whether more generally some of the characters’ emotional states required quite so much exposition. Still, though, Jake Brunger’s writing is powerful and uncompromising, and each of the four characters receives forgiveness from the narrative without being let off the hook.

The show’s designers have made some risky choices here, and have strayed from the stark kitchen sink minimalism characteristic of some earlier productions of the play. Daniel Carter-Brennan’s frenetic lighting design oscillates between euphoria and looming post-coital dread, while Peiyao Wang’s set represents middle class domesticity gradually deconstructed. Where the show veers into over-production is the movement sequences, especially one memorably involving exercise balls, which lead to a loss of momentum between vignettes rather than acting as a connecting thread.

Four Play’s ending tableau, where a character blows out a birthday candle in a desperate gesture of reconciliation with their partner, reminds me more than a little of the ending to Sondheim’s Company. Like that musical, Four Play leaves us with no clear vision on what monogamy, or non-monogamy, should look like, but still manages to be life-affirming in how it dares to wonder about it. We may not know the answers any more clearly than when we entered the theatre, but we have many questions to ask ourselves on the walk home.

Four Play plays at the King's Head Theatre until 17 August