Young Actors Theatre – until 30th August 2026
Reviewed by Mike Linane
2**
Imagine a world where tele-voting decides the fate of real people’s lives. This is the premise that Island Tides portrays. Island Tides is a tv show where each week some monumental decision has to be made and the ‘contestants’ for want of a better word have to agree in advance to stick with the decision made by the viewing/voting audience. Think Judge Rinder or Judge Judy but not with petty squabbles between people but major, life changing decisions like should a married couple get divorced or not.
One ordinary morning, June, a high-profile divorce lawyer, receives a strange call. A television debate programme, Island Tides, invites her to take part in a special discussion. Faced with a difficult divorce case, she finds herself opposite an intimacy consultant who argues to hold the relationship together, confronting the same question: “Should Mr. and Mrs. Smith stay in their marriage… or walk away?”
By agreeing to appear on the programme Mr and Mrs Smith agree that if the viewing public think they should divorce then they must do so and they cannot ever remarry each other, if on the other hand the vote goes the way of the relationship counsellor then the married couple must have the counselling and stay together for the rest of their lives whether they want to or not.
As the studio lights come on and the cameras begin rolling, where will Mr. and Mrs. Smith’s marriage end up?
The concept of this play is a good and very worrying one for the day and age we live in. With the continued rise of reality tv just how much of a stretch of the imagination is it that we will one day be seeing a programme just like the one described above, but the problem is that we just don’t care about Mr and Mrs Smith at all. We only see them in a short pre-filmed segment where their marriage has obviously broken down and they are no longer communicating with each other at all. We have no idea how happy the marriage has been previously and only learn what has caused the breakdown relatively late in the play.
Most of the time is taken up with the lawyer and counsellor trying to cajole the studio audience and those watching at home to vote for them. Instead of it being a serious vote about two people’s lives it becomes a popularity vote about which of the two advocates are liked best – a bit like Strictly Come Dancing isn’t all about who is the best dancer at all but who the audience and studio judges like the most.
If only either the lawyer or the counsellor had some charisma or something about them to make the audience sit up and take note of what they are saying – but sadly they don’t. They are too wrapped up in their own worlds and trying to score points off each other to show any sort of personality at all. And what the sudden break of these two and the studio compere into singing rap music had to do with anything I really don’t know. Getting down wiv the kids? Appealing to the yoofs of today? Give me a clue!
For this play to work it needs much stronger casting and acting because at the moment it really doesn’t come alive at all.