Scott Purvis-Armour reviews a ‘pacey’ new production with ‘thoughtful’ moments of staging.
Whether it’s on the tarmac of Casablanca or in the whispering final scene of Lost in Translation, it’s unusual how many romantic rendezvous come crashing down with the smell of jet-fuel in the air. The love affair of Brief Encounter, too, would have been briefer if that bloody 13:06 to Chipping St Normality just ran on time. Love’s great adventure travels on planes and trains often, but remarkably rarely by automobiles.
Somehow the romanticism of being in a car and in love has been lost since Jack Kerouac was on the road…
But here in Gridlock, Kathryn Mincer’s pacey forty-five-minute two-hander, a transatlantic couple find themselves meandering on the highways of their relationship. The seven-year itch needs to be scratched—and it will be today, whether they like it or not, in a traffic jam on the road to somewhere.
The enjambment of the scenes ticktocks between the past and the present, unseating the couple into key moments in their relationship - the structural use of flashback is a sweet insight into the causes of their complacencies and commitments.
Like The Last Five Years, the non-linear arrangement allows the audience to understand the problems of “now” by looking at “then”, fleshing out the banal histories of their resentments with humanity and heart. A few moments involving cryptocurrency aside, the writing is identifiable and cleanly-written, sparkily painting the pair with humour.
From their initial infatuation to their over-saturation, Annika Foster and Gunnar Bjercke are instantly likeable as Alexa and Thomas. Their chemistry - in sickness and in health - bears all the joy of being young and in love and all the red lights of being older and wiser.
Underscored by the rumbling of train cars above, Foster’s excellent performance is filmic, playing with deftness on the frustration of heteronormative expectation until her disappointment fragments her control. Bjercke is endearing as the doubting Thomas, his facial expressions and performance showing the vulnerable confusions of not being the person our partner needs us to be and having no capacity to become them.
Gridlock is a thoughtful exercise in gesture which is made all the more remarkable by the intimacy of its box room staging at The Poetry Club, SWG3. With only two seats and a few chairs, the bulk of the play sits in the tense, terse claustrophobia of a car, giving the piece a true immediacy. There are so many moments when a finger flickers towards reconciliation. There are so many moments when a reassuring hand could save the pair from the abyss. But here restraint is used as a weapon, their absent physicality amplifying every thought they don’t want to say.
This is an enjoyable piece of theatre which is at its best in the misery, challenging us to question why we choose to remember. Are we performing relationships in Instagram-filtered long weekends or living them in the awkward silences of traffic jams?
In love, what makes it to the grid? And what do we lock in our hearts?
Gridlock performed at The Poetry Club, SWG3. It’s run has completed.
Photo by Richard Rankin.
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