Nick Payne’s One Day When We Were Young is a neatly crafted trio of vignettes, each of which provides an insight into how the lives of Violet (Cassie Bradley) and Leonard (Barney White) progress over a period of 60 years.
A interesting rather than gripping love story told with sensitivity.
The three significant moments in the lives of the two provide a micro view of their relationship, revealing their long-term love and affection for each other, along with the obstacles that came their way and the difficulties they encountered. Their conversations fill in the intervening years, providing backstories that fill out the picture of their long and tenuous romance.
Initially, we encounter them in a hotel bedroom. The first soldiers from the USA have arrived to join in the war effort. Lionel has received his call-up papers and in the morning he must leave to fight on the European Front. He survives the battles, but not without complications that undermine the promises they made to each other that night. How their futures evolve is the subject of the two following scenes.
James Haddrell, Artistic Director of Greenwich Theatre, has longed to direct this play and pays tribute to the actors who have the skills he was looking for to pull off this demanding work. “Both,” he says, “have an astonishing ability to see beyond the physical ageing process and understand the ageing of intelligence and emotion–two hearts ageing in parallel, though not always in unison.”
Their ageing is certainly well-crafted, with changes of gait, the wearing of spectacles, the acquisition of a limp for one and arthritic hands for the other indicating the passing of time matched by changes in voice. With age, their always tentative exchanges become even more measured as they furtively reference the life that might have been.
An air of melancholy pervades the scenes that are intimate but slow-moving, a mood aided by the confines of Studio 90 at the Park Theatre, and Pollyanna Elston’s realistic and flexible sets, lighting by Henry Slater and the all-important sound effects by Aidan Good.
It’s an interesting rather than gripping love story told with sensitivity.
