Phil Porter’s Blink at King’s Head Theatre is a darkly funny and tender meditation on loneliness, voyeurism and the ways in which we connect in today’s modern world.
Sophie’s father has died, leaving her spiralling, falling back in on herself and showing all the signs of mental health issues. Jonah has run away from the religious commune he was raised in after finding a bag of thousands of pounds his mother left him after she died. Through a series of small coincidences, Jonah unknowingly rents the flat below Sophie. Not knowing Jonah at all, Sophie sends him a baby monitor, a screen hooked up to a camera in her flat and he starts to watch here in small doses and quickly moves to constant viewing. Despite their closeness, just a floor apart, their actual paths never cross. Jonah takes this up a level, he starts to follow her out and around London. It is a strange and creepy setup, but each of them has consented to this. There was a choice to turn on a camera and to give someone else access to the camera.
Both of the cast are strong, and they work exceptionally well together, embracing the full quirks of their characters. A sense of loneliness permeates throughout, but it is underpinned by a yearning for connection – however strange that connection might be – that drives them. Both have a presence, a charisma that really sells their moment in life and the magnetic pull that they feel towards each other.
Abigail Thorn’s Sophie is intensely deliberate, knowing she is being watched, she chews each apple piece, 10 times. She moves slowly but with purpose. It’s all planned, even resetting her top to hang off her shoulder.
Joe Pitts strikes a delicate balance; Jonah is both creepy and endearing at the same time. Jonah tells us he was raised in a cult, and Pitts nicely plays up his naivety and disconnect at the times from the world we know.
Porter’s script is funny and nuanced; he makes it easy for us to warm to these strange people. It would be easy to be dismayed or to be disgusted, but instead, as their parasocial relationship comes close to crossing into real life, it is so easy to root for them, hoping that this strange connection they have found can turn into something meaningful.
Simon Paris’s direction works well, building on an underlying layer that we too, as the audience, are the voyeurs. After all, we are watching Sophie and Jonah’s love story. There are several clever beats, from directly addressing the audience to knowing looks shared around, that heighten the sense of intimacy and perhaps even suggest a little complicity.
The set designed by Emily Bestow is dominated by a series of monitors, showing Sophie as we watch her through Jonah’s baby monitor but also videos (by Matt Powell) of props floating in, as Jonah describes finding the bag of money, an almost ghostly video comes across the screens. Small pieces of furniture are moved around to build chairs and beds as needed.
Despite the strange setup, Blink feels really natural and really human. The performances, direction and design direction combine to make a strange but still deeply empathetic story that feels alive – and more and more relevant to today’s world.
Blink plays at King’s Head Theatre until 22nd March https://kingsheadtheatre.com/whats-on/blink-df19
Reviewer: Dave Smith
Reviewed: 23rd February 2026
North West End UK Rating: