Woman in her 20s meets man in his 40s at an airport. They reconnect in Berlin in the post-flight taxi queue, spend time in an expensive hotel and start a relationship. With its cute dialogue, this early play from Fiona Doyle – author of the award-wining Coolatully – starts out a little like a romcom but becomes as fractured as a smashed bottle as it charts the breakdown of a relationship that turns increasingly violent.
It might be read as a fable about the baggage brought into every relationship and the way the damage of the past affects the present. It could be perceived as a particularly twisted revenge drama. Or it might simply be a reminder that something that appears beautiful can turn out to be poisonous, even fatal.
The trouble is that telling a story in non-chronological order, so that the audience must piece together the narrative and every scene becomes like a clue at a crime scene, doesn’t necessarily make the story any more compelling than if it had been told in more traditional fashion.
The terse, often enigmatic exchanges in Abigail are baffling as often as they are illuminating, and Doyle neglects to flesh out her characters (played by Tia Bannon and Mark Rose). The Man is particularly sketchily drawn, and you wonder why he doesn’t just cut and run much earlier. Joshua McTaggart’s production, the final play in the Bunker’s inaugural season, never makes us warm to either of them.
•At the Bunker, London, until 4 February. Box office: 020-7234 0486
