Review: STRATEGIC LOVE PLAY, Soho Theatre

The Fringe bubble is a very real phenomenon. Critics ramble, rave, and plaster stars everywhere as if Edinburgh is the Hollywood Walk of Fame, only for shows to transfer back to reality where they often don’t take off. The London transfer is the real test, and Strategic Love Play, now playing at Soho Theatre, passes with flying colours.

Miriam Battye’s slippery two-hander starts as a scintillating skewering of modern dating. The ritualistic pint-buying, vacuous small talk, and jittery body language are all observantly captured. But appearances can be deceiving. Soon it swiftly unravels itself into something less easy to pin down. Not so much a middle finger to Richard Curtis and more a full-on punch in the face.

On the one hand, endlessly charming, the humour cuts thick and fast, lucidly teetering between corrosive awkwardness and stinging wit. On the other hand, something more tragic is at play slicing deeper than taking a swipe at Hinge. Romance, or the lack of it, becomes a prism through which we gain a lugubrious picture of a modern world sapped of vitality, eroticism, and meaning.

The unnamed man buries his anxieties under his cheery nice-guy façade and buries himself in his blokeish bravado. His also unnamed female date goes on the offensive; her combative honesty shreds him to pieces, revealing a tender core nestling in the heart of his seeming normality. But it’s not without some Friendly Fire that lets slip her true loneliness as well as his.

The resulting interplay brilliantly balances abrasive cruelty with humour, an existential quagmire lined with countless adorable moments. But are those sparks flying or warning lights we see flickering from within?

The real bleakness emerges when the two agree to draw up a semi-ironic relationship contract: Stand next to each other at barbecues. Make each other’s friends jealous. Have separate televisions. The L word is an afterthought, a bonus alongside the nuts and bolts of the relationship, nothing but a sterile contract.

Actors Archie Backhouse and Letty Thomas riff off each other like a jazz improvisation. Their syncopated rhythm is tightly wound and set off with Katie Posner’s slick direction, all anchored around set designer Rhys Jarman’s rotating bar table. The two spin like satellites out of control; soon they will hurtle back to Earth, and everything will explode.

There is a detectable Peep Show-like quality to the awkwardness of their banter. Surely no coincidence: Battye was a collaborator of Peep Show creator Jesse Armstrong in the writing room for his latest series Succession (you might have heard of it). At times it feels derivative, the cringe inducing self-aware shtick is well worn even if is glossed up in a contemporary sheen. But in any case, let’s hope Battye resists the seductive allure of the television world. Theatre needs more writing like this.

Strategic Love Play runs until September 23

Photography credit: Pamela Raith

                                                                                                                            

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