From ‘Quiz’ and ‘Ink’ to Facetime romance
Theatre Bubble Nottingham Playhouse ★★★☆☆
Asweet little love story about a couple who meet for the first time the day before lockdown? It’s not what you might expect from state-of-the-nation playwright James Graham, who is usually found nosing around the theatre of hung parliaments or vast publishing empires for West End hits such as This House and Ink, not to mention the scandal of Charles Ingram, whose guilt or otherwise as the coughing major from Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Graham turned into the restlessly questioning play Quiz, and then an ITV drama.
Yet, for much of this year, lockdown has indeed been the state of the nation, and in this 70-minute piece, part of a three-week festival of new work, our present straitened living conditions provide Graham with a nifty prism through which to probe the ways in which human relationships are at the mercy of external circumstance.
Performed to a live audience and live-streamed on Zoom (for just three performances), and directed with vim by Adam Penford on a big, bare stage, it’s fabulously well acted. We first meet Morgan (Jessica Raine) and Ashley (Pearl Mackie) giddy on the euphoria of a successful first date (rare these days, says Morgan, who is used to dating app encounters that lead “like a trail of breadcrumbs to nowhere”). Graham offers two alternating possibilities for what happens next: in one, they lock down together in Morgan’s flat; in the other, they conduct their relationship over Facetime. Turns out, sex is easier when apart (sexting proves less of a stumbling block than the intimidating presence of an actual bed) while living together forces them to thrash out their political differences – on BLM, for instance.
Mainly, though, Bubble offers the comfort of recognition. Graham reflects the last eight months back at us rather than reconfiguring them in revelatory ways. The zesty, cut-and-thrust dialogue is peppered with observations that are slightly too well worn: on this weird new thing called Zoom; on how those without gardens are the new social have-nots; on how scared we all are of being alone. Still, Raine and Mackie are beautifully in tune with each other, catching the volatile eruptions and delightful intimacies of imprisoning proximity and enforced separation. I suspect Graham has a far deeper, angrier play bubbling away on the divided state of our new Covid nation; for the meantime, this is a lovely, diverting theatrical salve.