Four friends living in London brought together by unfortunate events: their love life sucks. Ryan (Lewis Bear Brown), Stephanie (Clodagh Greene), Chris (Tom Newland) and Lili (Ayesha Patel) have struggled to keep their love life on the upward trajectory. Stephanie announcing her divorce, Chris being cheated on by his fiancé, Ryan struggling to find a man he truly likes and Lili never quite getting over Ryan- the only man she’s ever loved.
We are slightly rooting for Stephanie and Chris as it’s revealed they have a past and potentially through their heart break, they can find comfort in each other. However, the story does feel quite dated and limiting for the actors as every time we explore a complexity to heartbreak the script stays very 2 dimensional.
Lili is a masters student who is in love with her flatmate, Ryan who came out as gay quite a while ago. This trope has been explored many times before but in the current climate we live in, it feels extremely behind. A scene in which Stephanie questions Ryan living with them and whether it’s harmful for Lili felt really strange to me- as if it should be on Ryan to give Lili distance for being who he really is? It just didn’t really sit well with me and there were a few moments in the story where moments were played for laughs and didn’t really push the character’s story forward in any way.
The quality of talent is truly unquestionable, especially the women of the cast. Their voices are strong, they really root in their moments and have very beautiful moments of vulnerability. Clodagh Greene is outstanding in her control and connection to character; it was really lovely to see her on stage. As a cast, I don’t think I truly believed in their situations- more so the depth of their sadness. To make a comedy truly fly we need to really believe in the backstory of a character and sometimes I felt like the scene was secondary to the music, maybe more time was spent on the songs than the build up beforehand so the need to sing their feelings never felt like a pay off.
That being said, the actors are all very individually talented and I do feel like the script limited them in many ways. The stage only offers so much room and was designed in a way that there was never too much space for the actors to move, it was potentially doomed from the start.
I can see the potential in this story, but it would need a lot of work in modernising, or just truly exploring the true complexities of romance especially in how much dating online has overtaken the world. Theatre looks very different now after Covid and the strikes, we need a lot more bums on seats and the quality of the work has unfortunately declined as there’s less room to make mistakes now. I appreciate casting more ‘well-known’ names will bring more publicity to a piece however, it feels like an unsustainable practice to priorities your cast’s followers over their abilities. It’s making theatre rather materialistic, and it is a big shame when ticket prices continue to increase when the quality doesn’t seem worth it.
There are moments of joy but unfortunately, this might be one to miss.
Reviewer: Alice Rose
Reviewed: 25th September 2025
North West End UK Rating: