Review: Debris, Brixton House

Kaia (Kaya Slawecka-Williams) wants to be a playwright. But at the tender age of 23 she’s blocked, without a play inside her that needs to be written. Her boyfriend, Tom (Tom Hunter), is about to fix that!

When Kaia and Tom meet up in a café, some time later, he’s a bit put out by the play she has finally published, using their relationship and break-up as inspiration in a very literal sense. Because it turns out that recollections may vary. With the play already cast, they decide to go back over their own history by having the actors play out some of the more contentious scenes.

After a slow and deliberately awkward start, Eleanor Cowlin’s play comes to life at this point. The two actors playing the fictionalised versions of Kaia and Tom (Maya Lewsey and Theo Collins) cut through the emotional tension with a businesslike commitment to performance. While Lewsey, as the rather straitlaced and reserved Kaia, has less opportunity for fun, Collins is able to ham up Tom’s smarmy pretentiousness to great effect. There is also an entertaining turn from Sharitah Boulton as the RADA grad determined to bring her method A-game to a supporting actress role in this impromptu read-through. The comedy increases as real Tom and real Kaia become more and more interventionist, while their actors become confused and exasperated.

Perhaps because this is a comedy rather than a drama, Cowlin doesn’t quite succeed in making the reported relationship as credible as the break-up. After four years, Tom and Kaia were still living separately, miles apart and they didn’t have the short-hand ways of communicating that couples develop over the years. They used each other’s name all the time, which is normal during a row, perhaps, but is very jarring in everyday conversation. While Tom pumped obscure films into the world, seemingly careless of audience reactions, or even having an audience at all, Kaia was terrified by the writing process, and even more by the sharing process. They were opposites who attracted, but we don’t really get the sense that they gelled.

The set is necessarily simple in this black box space: two straight-backed chairs and a small table, to represent the café where the whole action takes place. But the play within the play has scenes which take place in Tom’s flat, where a more upholstered set-up would make it easier to show the casual familiarity of a four-year relationship. Lighting, by Jahmiko Marshall, creates interest with hanging light bulbs that glow up and down at different points in the action.

Debris surveys the wreckage of a romantic relationship, and shows us the different attitudes, actions, inactions and failures of communication that caused the wreck. It demonstrates how memories can be adjusted to fit our preferred narrative, and how insecurities can help to shape what we see and hear. It touches on, but doesn’t really explore, the ethics of fictionalising someone else’s story, without their knowledge or consent. However, most of its laughs come from observations about actors, artists and the creative process.

This is already a strong play, with interesting themes, a nice circular structure and good performances. I would love to see a slightly longer version where some of those themes are discussed more thoroughly, and we get to know Tom and Kaia better as the couple they once were. With a bit more realism and a bit more insight, the play could make us think and feel, at the same time as making us laugh.

Written and directed by: Eleanor Cowlin
Produced, Dramaturg & Movement Direction by: Nora Azmani

This show has now ended its run at Brixton House.