We’ve all been there. Desperate for jobs, money, love, a quick bunk-up or even just a packet of twiglets… finding it easier to knock back a cheeky one rather than face up to the reality of who we might be… thinking that today will be all our tomorrows… puzzled when things don’t fall into place as all those Richard Curtis films suggested they might.
An hour of witty, warm and at times wise entertainment
Goya Theatre have created an hour of witty, warm and at times wise entertainment which tackles all those hiccups of your early twenties; with songs reminiscent of Fringe staple I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change and all-too recognisable scenes of when we acted like adults but were as easily wounded as a tortilla chip bouncy castle.
The six actors create nicely differentiated characters, but with varying degrees of psychological depth which does make it harder to care about some of their choices. At the heart of the piece is Mel (the ‘Monica’ of the group, if Friends references aren’t too lazy) whose friends swoop and swirl around her whilst her little life slowly falls apart. As outwardly supportive as they really believe themselves to be, they are nevertheless – and rightly – self-obsessed and rather more intent on making their own mark on the world.
We have all had these friendships: intense, familial connections so profound and so necessary that we can never believe they will fade. They almost inevitably do, of course, but rarely without leaving a sadness of spirit and a bitter niggle that perhaps we could have tried harder to keep it all together. But life is a casting off; and in a time of fiscal uncertainty, prioritising one’s career is not so much a selfish or even ambitious move as an economic necessity.
Thus holidays are cancelled, relationships stymied, and parties unattended as the characters beat on against the current; some desperate to be borne back to the past, others desperate to stride towards the future.
It is a sobering moment, the realisation that any iteration of ourselves is shaped to a degree by our associates, but perhaps this is the point. Leaving the drunken, technicolour fairytale world of University and/or teenaged abandon behind, one is forced to face up to a healthy dose of self reality before meeting the next cycle of confidantes and lovers.
