The streets of London are supposedly paved with gold, but in Matt Hartley’s play the race for two thirtysomething couples to get on the capital’s property ladder means they must save their pennies. In Polly Sullivan’s design, the floor of their small, shared flat is covered with penny coins and the shelves are lined with jars full of loose change.
Such is the desperation of teacher Rachel (Natalie Dew) and civil service press officer Ben (Ben Addis) to save enough for a deposit for their own place that they have come up with what seems like a good wheeze. They’ll split the rent on a tiny, one-bedroom flat with marketing officer Melanie (Nicola Kavanagh) and her doctor boyfriend, Sam (Karl Davies). It will require compromise and sacrifice all round. Melanie has already cut up her Whistles card. But Rachel and Melanie have been best friends for 15 years, so what could possibly go wrong?
This play, which arrives a little behind the curve in a growing genre of theatre that makes drama out of London’s housing crisis, is an oddly constructed beast that has the flavour of a TV sitcom, gradually morphing into a series of dramatic editorials about the inequalities of life, social mobility, entitlement, and need and greed. It then deepens into an unexpectedly moving account of how property is theft in more ways than one. Morality and friendship eventually take a battering. As Rachel observes, the desperation to save enough money for a deposit turns friendship into a competition, particularly when she discovers that Melanie and Sam’s salaries mean they can save three times as much as her and Ben.
This is a rare play in that it begins poorly but gets better and more interesting the longer it goes on. Laced in with the jokes are some intriguing philosophical and political questions. Why, for example, does someone whose job it is to decide the font size on a bottle of bleach get paid more than a primary school teacher? If, as Sam says, London is such an unforgiving city, should it be left to the clever and driven like himself, Russian oligarchs and those lucky enough to have access to the bank of mum and dad?
Lisa Spirling’s otherwise nifty production uses exaggerated movement to mark the passing of the months and the increasing sense that the flat is shrinking, but this physical-theatre device is over-busy and overused. Still, the play and the production are very good on intimacy and its limitations. And, while Hartley is in danger of scuppering his own play by failing to make the quartet more initially sympathetic, there are four fine performances, especially from Davies as Sam, a man who is so certain about his future that he fails to see it starting to crumble beneath his feet.
• At Hampstead Downstairs, London, until 10 June. Box office: 020-7722 9301.
