Think male-female two-hander in academia and a pair of plays leap to mind: Oleanna and Educating Rita. Combining the lacerating fury of the former with the fuzzy warmth of the latter would be like stirring battery acid into Ovaltine, but that is what Ryan Craig (The Holy Rosenbergs) does in Charlotte and Theodore, which gallops through hot-button topics (cancel culture, sensitivity training, pronouns) in a sketchy 90 minutes.
The action begins with esteemed academic Charlotte (Eve Ponsonby) leaving for a job in the US while her husband, philosophy professor Theodore (Kris Marshall), stays behind with their children. Skipping back and forth in time, we see how they came together – she was his research assistant, then his faculty boss – before tearing themselves apart over ideological differences.
