Anna Burnside reviews the latest offering from A Play, A Pie and A Pint, a production with ‘strong performances’.
Jess and Scott meet on a night out that starts in the club and ends in a maternity ward. It’s not a love story, it’s a making-the-best-of-a-wild-situation-that-no-one-asked-for story, and that’s a tough gig.
Neither are ready to be parents. Jess is about to go to university while Scott is studying music in London, playing in a band, more interested in pints than prams.
Writer Nathan Scott-Dunn puts the narrative into rhyming couplets, with the actors breaking into regular dialogue for key scenes. Couplets are having a moment - they also feature in the recent historical musical Flora - and they can be hard to pull off.
Here, the contrast of the very modern material with the archaic form works pretty well. Rhyming ape with gaffer tape to describe Scott’s chaotic dance moves shows real theatrical ambition.
With a script full of twisty lines needing considerable comic timing, Un-Expecting stands or falls on the performances. Happily, these are strong. The star of the film version of Beats, Cristian Ortega, is an endearing and candid Scott, grappling with decisions well above his pay grade.
Cindy Awor is hugely likeable as salty, smart-mouthed Jess, although there are few 18-year-olds with this level of sass and self-confidence.
And there’s the rub. These characters are mature beyond the plot. They articulate their feelings and make rational, adult decisions. Scott is desperate not to be like his own father, who is hastily introduced a couple of beats before he has to become the anti-role model. Jess is living an independent life with no visible means of support even though she has yet to start university.
There are no rhymes outré enough to compensate for that.
Un-Expecting performs at Oran Mor’s A Play, A Pie and A Pint until April 11, 2026. For further details, go to the production’s website.
Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
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