Trafalgar Studios 6 June – 8 July. Reviewed by Claire Roderick
Richard Bean’s new play is an intimate affair, perfectly at home in Trafalgar Studio 2. Claire Lams plays a woman who married young and was widowed by World War One. She is a thoroughly modern woman trapped by the constraints of the time; and ten years later, in an England missing almost an entire generation of men, she is determined to have a baby. Enter “Dennis” (Ben Lloyd-Hughes), sent by Doctor Trollope as a hands-on sperm donor.
There is lots of comedy to be found in their first meeting, with Dennis trying to remain business-like setting out the rules and parameters of the arrangement, but becoming more and more flustered under the barrage of “Stephanie’s” questions and rambling chatter as she tries to dispel her anxiety.
The pair circle the bed (under the constant gaze of her dead husband’s photo), fully clothed, and full of sexual tension, as she tries to understand his reasons for sleeping with so many women. His survivor guilt about not fighting in the war has made him cling onto Freud’s Eros and Thanatos theory, and when he finally explains, full of conviction that THIS is his war, to defeat death, you begin to see that he is just as broken as the shell-shocked survivors whose wives he impregnates.
Bean’s writing is as sharp as ever, finding comedy in the darkest moments, but not overshadowing the melancholy and despair of the characters’ situations. Lams and Lloyd-Hughes are both utterly convincing and heart-breaking as two people searching for love and affection, and have wonderful chemistry and comic timing.
The set is underwhelming as you wait for the play to start – a bed and a background of oddly angled distressed mirrors. But once the play begins, the concept becomes clear. As the actors move around the stage, wherever they stand, and wherever you sit in the audience, their faces are still visible – enhancing the feeling of being voyeurs in this tiny bedroom where no secrets can stay hidden for long.
Kiss Me is a funny, provocative and engaging play; a millennial Brief Encounter with rum and sex rather than tea and cake. Well worth a look.