The poster tagline to Pinch in Love is ‘However appetising the baby may look, the answer is no to cooking it!’ It’s a sinister slogan that promises a darkly comic play full of humour, but alas. Pinch and Seedy are two toddlers, jealous of their new baby sister who has taken all of their mother’s attention away from them. Talking with the intelligence and philosophical framework of adults (and audience members), they scheme to kill her, but find it harder than they imagined as they circle around finding any excuse to continue discussing proverbial dribble for an hour. So a little like Hamlet - but rubbish.
There are subjects thrown up in the air during Caroline Mitchell’s play that could be well addressed had they been portrayed more as drama rather than discussion. The Stewie Griffin-like toddlers talk about the newborn baby as an ‘immigrant’ and have unnatural hatred towards it, but never is the subject dealt with in a manner other than merely describing the situation on stage and suggesting (only missing a massive banner) that it’s an allegory. The issue here isn’t necessarily that there’s no discernible conflict at the centre of the play, it’s that it lacks the humour or charm that it desperately needs. While I thought the four actors generally acted well, they couldn’t give life to the flabby script that just went on and on and on. There was a moment during Pinch in Love where I thought ‘this must be over soon'; I was fifteen minutes in.
