Sweet Nothings, Barons Court Theatre Review

Reviews

3 Apr

Written by Charlotte for Theatre and Tonic.

Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in exchange for an honest review

Making its London debut after a stint at the Hollywood Fringe in Los Angeles, California, Raegan Payne’s Sweet Nothings certainly fits its genre of venue, even if it doesn’t exactly fit its actual genre. Billed as ‘a series of four short comedies… like your last relationship,’ Payne’s cycle of skits utilizes an efficiency of writing and design that many playwrights struggle to achieve, making it a versatile piece that moulds itself to the uneven pub theatre space with ease. Its ‘short comedies,’ however, come across more like cautionary tales than they do romantic comedies.

The first, cheekily entitled In A Hole, sees a suave yet grossly insensitive reporter (Niall Burns) making a media circus of three women whose partners have been trapped by a mine collapse. From this very first vignette, it is obvious that Payne is attempting to find a balance between the comedic and the heartfelt. Unfortunately, it is even more apparent that she hasn’t quite found that balance yet. While the women (Collette O’Brien, Lily Rogers, Nicola Rockhill) discuss their dreams of Disney cruises and land left-field jokes about a misogynist God in one moment, the overbearing reporter finds his heart in the next, just in time to read an illuminating letter from a miner with strangely discordant sincerity.

This disjointed tone continues throughout the piece, with overdone tropes like the unrequited ‘I love you’ and the very public breakup in the second skit, Things Unsaid, moving aside for a meet-cute with a stalker in the third, Ill-Informed. The final piece, Sweet Nothings, sets the backbone of the cycle, relationship troubles, completely aside in favour of another bit of low-hanging comedic fruit: one woman’s discovery of self-love, so to speak, as heard by her flatmate through a bathroom door.

While most of Sweet Nothings’ self-contained relationship dramas are far from ground-breaking, if you’re looking for some short and snappy jokes that don’t require much critical thinking, they deliver those in droves. The third, however, crosses into territory which is less cliché than it is off-putting. Ill-Informed’s tagline reads, ‘Olivia is really bad at living. Owen is very bad at stalking. Thank god, they’re going to meet.’ I am not inclined to immediately write off any subject matter, even an attempt at a stalker comedy. After all, I’d be remiss to suggest it’s never been done successfully before. Shortly after Ill-Informed began, though, I lost any hope this would be among those successes.

I was immediately disquieted by the recurrent punchline coming in the form of violent outbursts toward Olivia. Indeed, I found myself viscerally uncomfortable with the knee-jerk laughter that came each time Owen (Jack Crutch) hurled a threat toward the dismissive Olivia in a fit of rage. Whether Owen is ‘bad at stalking’ or not, to make behaviour that threatens the lives of so many women into an endearing comic trait is difficult to do tastefully, even more so in a fifteen-minute narrative. If one went into Sweet Nothings expecting a few light, raunchy comedies, they might find themselves taken aback by the sudden tonal shift from jokes about vegan cheese to discussions of obsessive violence and suicidal ideation.

The strongest writing in Payne’s play is found in between the skits themselves in the form of the black and white textual projections filling in the transitions. There is a genuine charm to the voiceless laments of long scene changes and invitations for audience members to assist, only for the words ‘Just kidding. We aren’t insured for that’ to appear with perfect comic timing. This broken fourth-wall, tongue-in-cheek production design is especially effective in the pub theatre space and held my attention skilfully even as actors changed costumes and moved set pieces. The use of these slides evoked the age of the silent movie, making me wish all the more that the action in between had a greater sense of movement and even, perhaps, interaction. Unfortunately, it was not to be.

It is worth noting that the opening-night seats were full and far from quiet. So even if I am not among them, Sweet Nothings does appear to have its audience. Perhaps if you have found yourself the victim of modern dating culture, you too will find something to laugh about in Payne’s comedy. If you’re anything like me, though, you’ll find yourself a little bit bored and more than a little bit concerned about the state of heterosexual romance.