Search

Saved articles

You have not yet added any article to your bookmarks!

Browse articles

GDPR Compliance

We use cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies, Privacy Policy, and Terms of Service.

One Day When We Were Young

 
Richard Beck Review by Richard Beck 3 Published: 8 Mar 2025 Park Theatre London Show Dates: 26 Feb 2025-22 Mar 2025

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.

Related to this article:

Location:

Performances

The Blurb:

In 1942, as the bombs begin to fall, Leonard and Violet embark on their first night together and hope it won’t be their last. It’s the eve of Leonard’s departure for the Front and everything seems to be falling apart for the young couple. But despite their fears the world keeps turning, time keeps moving on and, over a period of sixty years, the invisible bond between two people is stretched to its limit.

From writer Nick Payne, (Tony Award-nominated Constellations; We Live In Time and Wanderlust, BBC/Netflix), One Day When We Were Young is a delicate, intimate, heart-breaking picture of two lives played out against an ever-changing world, and a glimpse of the fragility of the promises we make to one another.