Paul tells us that 94% of birds (the feathered ones) are monogamous. He is filled with this sort of trivia. After a night in the pub with his mates he has come, drunk and swaying, to see his ex-girlfriend. With useless facts about birds and a flower between his teeth, he wakes her up and sets off a train of flashbacks and reminiscences that take us right through their relationship from the start to... wherever it is they are now. Which isn't as bad a night out as it sounds.
The play was written by Craig Baxter, and this is its first outing. It seems very much of the 90s: this fetish that all 90s playwrights have for constantly making actors break the fourth wall, ignore each other and start chatting to the audience instead. In Monogamy, a little bell goes off every time an actor feels the need to unload something, which is useful. Some of these bits, after all, are clichéd stuff that we have all heard a million times before... oh, but then what relationship doesn't include clichéd stuff that we have all heard a million times before?
What lifts this play slightly above the million other two-handers about relationships are the really good performances by Caroline Fitzgerald as Emma and Joseph Millsom as Paul. Millsom, especially, turns in a gem of blokeishness, from the moment he walks on, already looking hungover, through drunken sentimentality, confessing his infidelity, to flashbacks of bewilderment at Fitzgerald's preoccupation with cleaning. You can tell this has been written by a man: Millsom certainly gets most of the good lines, and Fitzgerald, although sympathetic, does seem to spend a large amount of their relationship with her arms crossed and her face screwed up, looking tense ("time of the month?").
Beyond this, the actual basis for the relationship seems a bit stretched at times: they are polar opposites whom it is hard to imagine as friends, let alone lovers, and she has chucked him out once and for all because he made some comments which were pretty bad, but surely not worth ending a relationship over. Maybe she should have chucked him out after she smelt another woman in his underpants?
But all these quibbles can be ignored if you want to just watch the damn thing: it moves fast and entertainingly, with good laughs and a few very soppy bits, and does pose useful questions such as why is it so hard to stick together and do we belong in the 2% of mammals who are monogamous? Of course, it doesn't answer them.
