James Fritz made a small splash at Edinburgh this year with Ross and Rachel, but it’s this cleverly structured four-hander that confirms him as a writer going places. Quite uncomfortable places, in fact, in a fascinatingly slippery play in which perceptions and sympathies constantly shift.
Di (Kate Maravan) and David (Jonathan McGuinness) never got out of Croydon, south London, where they were raised, but they have aspirations for their 17-year-old son, Jack, and he shows signs of fulfilling them. He’s within reach of the A-level results he needs for a very good university when he’s badly beaten up by the brother of his ex-girlfriend, Cara (Ria Zmitrowicz).
Di goes into overdrive trying to protect her “little boy”, and what mother wouldn’t fight like a lioness for her cub? But it becomes apparent that Jack, who never appears on stage, isn’t perhaps the entirely innocent victim that she first thought, and that in a digital age of hidden lives the people we love may not always be who we think they are.
Often shockingly funny and full of little ambiguities, this drama deals in how we see ourselves and others – and make judgments. Like Di, the audience finds itself on treacherous ground as moral certainties collapse and relationships unravel. Is Jack’s best friend, Nick (Anyebe Godwin), quite as thick as Di assumes? There is tragedy in Cara’s understanding that the world is stacked against her because of her gender, not to mention how she looks, speaks and where she comes from. Fritz deals well with the subtleties of class.
At times, the plotting is too obviously signposted, but this is a punchy, thoughtful evening that gets an intense, claustrophobic production from Anna Ledwich and boasts a quartet of fine performances.
Maravan is outstanding as the increasingly isolated Di, a woman whose life and moral compass are spinning.
- At Trafalgar Studios, London, until 5 December. Box office: 0844 871 7632.
