This is a girl-meets-girl story of two women flirting at a nightclub, falling in love and vowing never to become like other boring couples whose sex and conversation gets stale.
We feel the sparks between them as Juniper (Stella Taylor) and Jules (Gabriella Schmidt) entwine themselves on Cara Evans’ simple set of a single bed on the traverse stage. Jules looks wondrously at Juniper’s vagina – she has only ever had boyfriends before now – and accidentally tells her she loves her. If they ever split up, says Juniper, she would end up looking for someone else exactly like Jules.
It is a bright, shiny button of an affair but – of course – they begin to bicker and hit the buffers as the relationship progresses. While their trajectory is a fairly familiar one, there is so much zest and freshness in Stephanie Martin’s funny, sweet and quietly radical script that this couple’s story feels entirely unique, their dialogue staying sharp and original.
Beautifully directed by Bethany Pitts, the exuberant tennis match conversations are balanced against beats of silence and lively music by Nicola T Chang. Even the baldly romantic lines zing and have little trace of schmaltz. “All of this space has opened up inside,” says Jules, after sleeping with Juniper for the first time. When they jokingly talk about splitting up, Jules says there is no way she would leave: “We’ve just bought a new mop.”
There are greater questions asked around love and freedom: how to be in a relationship that still allows for excitement, individual autonomy and a lack of possessiveness. “What if we run out of things to say?” asks Jules, and floats the idea of “ethical non-monogamy” which brings the play’s biggest tensions.
Both performances are scintillating, full of chemistry and nuance with niftily enacted sex scenes. They are by turns meltingly adoring of each other (“I don’t have words for that feeling,” one says to the other about her attraction) but also cruel (“I’m so bored of you”) and sadly vulnerable (“You stopped looking at me. Your face changed”). It is an intense love story, in the sweetest possible sense, and a must-see for all romantics, and otherwise.
Juniper and Jules is at Soho theatre, London, until 14 May.
