Zoe Cooper’s first play for the Orange Tree was 2016’s warmly received look at teenage friendship, Jess and Joe Forever. Here she grapples, not completely successfully, with that tricky second album syndrome, as she focuses on a lesbian couple about to have a baby.
This is a fidgety piece of writing that’s hard to relax into, as experiments with form threaten to overwhelm an affecting central story. There’s much narration rather than dialogue; “The point of this part of the story” is not a line that sits easily in any drama. All of which is a pity, as we warm instantly to Claire (Lucy Briggs-Owen) and Kit (Zoe West), who have moved from London to Kit’s native South Shields, where Claire is feeling exactly as the title suggests as she takes up a demanding teaching post in Kit’s old school.
In case the metaphor was lost on us, there’s also a character called Fish (Tilda Wickham, whose mother is actress Janie Dee), a gender fluid student with a rather effortful love of wild swimming.
A line late on rings out with thrilling truth and clarity and makes us think rather wistfully of what might have been: “It’s exhausting to have to continually come out to everyone,” says Claire of her uncertain new surrounds. Still, there’s no faulting the trio of performances, nor the sensitive direction from Guy Jones.
Until June 1 (020 8940 3633, orangetreetheatre.co.uk)
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