In a small room above a pub, two rows of punters track three walls and a gaudily draped burnt-orange bed leers in from the fourth. By the stage door, a pair of Venetian masks perch on a mid-century side table. Two faded wooden bar stools stand in lazy attendance. We’re in the Hope Theatre, and with the lights still up, it’s already claustrophobic.
Clearly writer Tom Woffenden is familiar with a typical, low-budget trip to Venice: crowds, high expectations, and airless hotel rooms. With Director Saul Boyer, these twisted ringmasters throw an utterly broken relationship dynamic into this crucible, seemingly to watch their audience giggle and squirm. As time passes, it becomes clear they’re doing something altogether more impressive.
In And Out Of Love is a new two-hander romcom with a juicy premise. A couple go on holiday to Venice, supposedly the most romantic city in the world. There’s only one problem: they broke up six weeks ago. And the hotel didn’t get the twin-bed memo. Curse booking.com’s watertight cancellation policy.
Laughter and nostalgia are baked into the conceit, and in its breezy 70-minute run-time both are served up in spades. As a comedy it hits the mark: from minute one barks and guffaws fill the the Hope Theatre’s intimate confines. But there’s a little more to it than that. Boyer’s skilful direction and two powerful central performances transform In And Out Of Love into something more than the sum of its parts, packing a surprising emotional punch.
The drama centres around two utterly mismatched individuals, Sam (Robert Kot) and Grid (Olivia Bernstone). Unaccountably they have been in a relationship, loved one another, and still cling to the dregs of that feeling. After spending five minutes in their company, it was a little difficult to buy into all that. Constant bickering aside, they have very little in common.
Sam is a born-into-it ice cream man. He paces into the hotel room map-in-hand, his wide-brimmed hat and backpack completing the look of a browbeaten geography teacher. Words come out with a half-stutter as he pauses mid-sentence to buy himself time; he’s scanning his brain’s back catalogue for a fitting final wisecrack. In his constant search for the right thing to say, on occasion he’ll nail it. Just as often, his insight is slide-tackled by a misplaced cultural reference. On their first date, he quotes Gandalf. Planning a day trip, he refers to Venice as “a patch of waterous earth”.
Grid works in Finance and carries herself with confidence. While Sam approaches the double-bed problem with thick layers of artificial panic, Grid sets down her outlandishly large suitcase, swaggers around the room and falls onto the bed. Sam – we really don’t need to worry. We’ve slept together before. If it’s such a big problem, we’ll top and tail.
To believe in these two we’re going to need a bit of context, and it’s in the context giving that this production takes flight. From here, half the story is told in flashback. We watch their relationship bud, blossom and wilt. As we move back and forth through time, the music (Arthur Sawbridge) and lighting (Ben Sayers) carefully map the landscape.
The first trip to the past (“remember when we first met?”) is like a gust of fresh air into the room. Their stifling dying-star dynamic lifted, we’re in a crazy golf bar for a mutual friends’ birthday party. Grid’s cheeky side is played up, and Sam manages to make a charm out of his awkward mannerisms. “Do you want to fuck?” “What??” “I said do you want to putt?”
The central pair manage to create an authentically strange relationship, formed by circumstance and woven by weirdness. Woffendon’s script gives them a lot of material, and has the room quacking and snorting with staccato laughter. But we aren’t bearing witness to two Tarantino-conjured wisecrackers; they are bad at communicating with one another, and usually we’re laughing at their failed attempts to work it all out. They’re weird-but-normal people, and that helps to deepen our sympathy.
The bed is centre-stage and central to the action; one moment as a symbol of the distance between them, the next as a weatherbeaten gondola. At the halfway mark, it’s host to a gloriously choreographed sex scene, limbs flailing under the covers as lights flash and tropical music plays. Clothes, books, and Prince Harry all fly out of the bed. By the end, we’re back in the past.
Like all relationships, the beginning was built on performative playing-up to their bubbliest best selves. As the veneer lifts, they notice each other’s true selves. It’s been obvious from scene 1 that there won’t – or, at least, shouldn’t – be a happy ending between these two. But as we approach the denouement, it’s hard not to have a shred of hope that, somehow, they might work it all out.
A delicately balanced show that bursts with heart, In And Out Of Love makes art out of awkwardness. Despair is cut with absurdist humour, joy tinged with anxiety, and despite inescapable incompatibility, the pairs’ tender attachment to one another pulls us along with them. They remind us of the value of volatile and painful experiences. Sometimes, it really is no-one fault.
5 stars!
About the author of this post
James Bates-Prince is a writer for bloated WhatsApp groups and dingy blogs. Marketer by day, by night he’s just another Nothing in the Rulebook contributor to be found chained to a typewriter. Find him on Insta at @jbpme.
nothing in the rulebook 
Leave a comment