Most of us simply dig up memories but the couple in Frantic Assembly’s new show clamber over a wall of filing cabinets filled with them. In a characteristically arresting production directed by Scott Graham, the drawers open to become steps, seats, even a toilet bowl; their contents include photos, golf clubs and glowing lightbulbs.
Each one sparks a recollection in Anna Jordan’s two-hander, which recounts a relationship from the couple’s origin story to their implosion and beyond. Framed by Simisola Majekodunmi’s colourful lighting, Jess and Robbie look back at the days and nights that define them as a pair.
It’s a memory play in the tradition of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, who wrote that such dramas “can be presented with unusual freedom of convention”. That’s certainly the case with the set, designed by Andrzej Goulding, featuring a bed that unfolds from the wall of cabinets and serves as both refuge and precipice for these lovers who cling to it.
Jordan has written a very modern romance, perhaps reflecting an age in which memories are methodically filtered and curated, often with deceptive results. On their first meeting, Jess lets Robbie share her mobile hotspot in a cafe. She seems carefree but he’s cautious. He slips away … only to unfathomably re-encounter her when he’s grappling with a train station’s wifi and recognises her network name.
All of this is relayed with the breeze of a couple’s well-told “how we met” party piece. Each interrupts the other’s memories with a differing account but crucially that never disrupts the flow of a pacy production. Throughout, Jordan prods at the way we purposefully embellish or remould our personal histories, but also how they morph almost on their own with the passing of time – all paralleled by Jess’s research interest in how fairytales lost their grislier elements.
This is Frantic Assembly’s 30th anniversary production – those cabinets could easily be filled with their past projects – and their assured brand of physicality is felt within the opening seconds. How many other companies could leave their signature so swiftly? There are moments here that are playful, sweet, sexy and vulnerable, sometimes all at once, as Jordan’s play reveals itself to be a close cousin, in theme and impact, to a pair of two-handers about the nitty-gritty of relationships: Duncan Macmillan’s Lungs and Jack Thorne’s The Solid Life of Sugar Water.
A visit to Jess’s parents becomes a squirming, sweaty feat of cringe comedy while a meeting with Robbie’s withdrawn dad is written with painful acuity – the father’s affection for Jess making Robbie furious about the warmth missing from his relationship with him.
In remarkable performances, Hannah Sinclair Robinson (Jess) and Joe Layton (Robbie) are both able to evoke what their characters were like as children, which helps the play’s second half hit home. They also convincingly convey how partners present us with the potential to be fuller, perhaps better versions of ourselves.
The story has a familiar trajectory but the couple’s compendium of life moments, from cramped flat to cold hospital room, never feels less than authentic. Watching this relationship slowly rounded out and then deflated is incredibly moving.
At Curve theatre, Leicester, until 4 October. Then touring until 28 February.
