Review Unfaithful

Unfaithful

By Owen McCafferty

Telling Tales

http://found111.co.uk/

An Irish man and a young English woman walk into a bar. It could be a post modern feminist joke or a pitch for the next steamy movie thriller or TV box set. Or, as in this case, the premise behind Owen McCafferty's play at fashionably grunge pop-up venue, Found111.

This bedroom drama  revolves around two couples, one Irish and one English: Respectively middle-aged wispily tense Joan (Niamh Cusack) and her beetle-browed husband of many years Tom (Sean Campion); Twenty-somethings pot-smoking sober suited Peter (Matthew Lewis) and  chavvily atrractive Tara (Ruta Gedmintas) with the former gathering up money to finance their lives.

Told in a series of flashbacks and flash forwards, this rather schematic piece criss-crosses the two couples. Irish plumber Tom admits to his wife his hotel bar encounter with a young woman. He lumbers through a few hoops of lies and half truths before coming up with what may or may not be the truth.

In a rush of resentment, Joan, a dinner lady supervisor, decides to ring the changes and books a room in the same hotel paying for a male escort, who turns out to be, lo and behold, Peter the other half of Tara   apparently a Maths' student dropout turned supermarket till girl  - she of the hooped earrings, green parka, denim mini skirt and long legs.

The scenes of this tale of infidelity are intercut with some clever in-character scene changes skilfully directed by Adam Penford with a simple ingenious design by Richard Kent transforming a bedroom to a bar with one swipe of a sliding wardrobe door.

Nonetheless, interesting directorial and designer tableaux feel more substantial than this rather colourless play. While Cusack reveals a lithe sexiness beneath her care-worn demeanour changing into a clinging Chinese silk dress before meeting her English gigolo, there are no other transforming or revelatory developments for the others. 

As a face-value plot about adultery or, as we suspect, a metaphor for the brave new world of TV and film which has developed since the internet, it feels unsatisfying. Still, it's deftly acted, precisely styled and fluently directed with the story of the older couple taking some telling twists and turns. We therefore give an  amber light for this stroll into the red light district of relationships.

Review Bad Jews

Bad Jews

by Joshua Harmon 

Jews Behaving Badly 

http://www.trh.co.uk

There's a scene in Sleepers with Woody Allen (born Allen Koenigsberg) visiting an outfitters' emporium in a dystopian future - with robots programmed to play out the roles of stereotypical Jewish tailors.

TLT and her convertible were reminded of this take on Jewish identity after motoring along to the Theatre Royal Haymarket for Joshua Harmon's dark comedy Bad Jews which has already completed a couple of successful runs in Bath and London before going on tour and returning to the capital. 

The self-conscious twenty something grandchildren of a Holocaust survivor cram into a New York studio apartment overlooking the Hudson River following his funeral.

Long-held resentments erupt in an almighty battle between two of the cousins for possession of the gold "Chai" (meaning "life") pendant belonging to their "Poppy" which he had kept hidden while in a Second World War concentration camp, apparently under his tongue.

Bad Jews tackles troublesome matters within the framework of a farce. While religion has clearly shaped their lives, the economic and gender divide proves just as important a catalyst for the Titanic struggle between born-again Jew Daphna (Ailsa Joy), a clever Vassar student, and her more secular wealthier cousins, Liam (Ilan Goodman), her main adversary with blonde non Jewish girlfriend Melody (Antonia Kinlay) in tow, and  Jonah "I don't want to get involved" Haber (Jos Slovick).

The play has a schematic feel with some obvious comedy set-ups. But it's a speedy and engaging no-interval 100 minutes with plenty of scorching below-the-belt dialogue and a subtle historical subtext for a post credit crunch generation cut adrift in modern globalized America and the world.  

Director Michael Longhurst keeps the action moving in the apartment and the corridor in an evocative set designed by Richard Kent and manages the broadstroke comedy without sacrificing the underlying seriousness and knotty issues. 

If the play itself is sometimes as self-conscious as the generation it portrays, there are scattergun visceral moments of insight, especially when Daphna is obviously fighting as much as a woman told to shut up as for her side of the family and her place in the world. 

An amber/green light for a fast-moving, if sometimes flawed, thought-provoking piece.