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Two actors rekindle an old passion while playing ex-lovers in a dreadful play, then see it fizzle out in an even worse one. That’s the premise of American writer Sarah Ruhl’s amusing but lightweight romantic backstage comedy. Bafflingly, it was a big hit in New York in 2014, but Blanche McIntyre’s production here is entertaining enough, despite an almost complete lack of sexual chemistry between the leads, MyAnna Buring and Patrick Kennedy.
In keeping with the play’s light mockery of theatrical tropes and cliches, their characters are identified only as She and He. The twist is that their central relationship is played (relatively) straight while everything around it – the hamminess of co-stars, the reactions of jilted lovers, the awfulness of the material they’re performing – is cartoonishly over the top.
