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Samuel James and Georgina Lamb |
Camden | Bryony Lavery's play Stockholm | Hampstead theatre
review |
STOCKHOLM
Hampstead Theatre
I GUESS you could say Todd has it pretty good. Almost perfect, in fact.
Funny, fit and fashionable, he lives with his sexy and devoted girlfriend, Kali, in a swish flat. The knife rack is formidable.
Lust rules their immaculately turned-out roost. When they are not shagging, they are dancing. Todd is cooking trout.
It’s his birthday. Tomorrow the lovebirds are going on holiday to Stockholm. Excuse me, I have just thrown-up on my keypad.
But what do you know? Life is not so perfect after all.
Kali (Georgina Lamb), so kind and caring, is in fact the Incredible Hulk. Or Mr Hyde. Or some unimaginable combination of the two.
Driven by jealousy, she is capable of summoning an explosive rage that had the audience trembling in the aisles.
After spotting an erroneous missed call on Todd’s phone, she calls the number to find a mystery woman at the end of the line.
Undergoing a frightening transformation in the loft, she returns to the kitchen to quiz Todd (Samuel James) and in doing so pushes their relationship to the brink.
It leads to what has become for the couple an addictive sequence: fighting, threat of closure, genuine remorse, romance rekindled and, emphatically, Stockholm.
Neither really, deep down, wants to break away from this pattern, even though it is killing them both.
Ostensibly a nut-bag of the highest order, our sympathies lie with the woman at the end.
This is gripping, thoughtful, at times erotic theatre that is told with great skill, flitting seamlessly between third and first-person narratives.
The “physical theatre” dance routines are understated, elegantly blended with the sharp script, and superbly performed on a clever rotating set.
Playwright Bryony Lavery (Frozen) has delivered an brutally honest perspective on the nature of modern love. Recommended.
Until May 25 |
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