Review: Best of Three, Etcetera Theatre

Camden Fringe 2023

Review: Best of Three, Etcetera Theatre

Summary

Rating

40

Ok

A tense, intimate play about memory and relationships, let down by a confused ending.

Jean and Bo are in town for Bo’s high school reunion, awaiting the arrival of his old school friend Ted. They’ve chosen to meet at a bar running a trivia quiz, even though all three of them profess to hate trivia – and despite the fact that they correctly guess the answers to all the questions. 

Jean (played with neurotic belligerence by Maisie Norma Seaton) is anxious before the arrival of Ted (a hyperactive Saul Barrett), for reasons that aren’t fully explained. she presses Bo (a self-confident performance from Esmonde Cole) to reminisce about his past, to Bo’s reluctance. ‘I just hate thinking about the past,’ he asserts. Which is a curious statement, since the whole of the play is given over to dredging up and reenacting old memories. 

All three are preoccupied with sex, and talk about little else. Bo and Ted recount their respective loss of virginity; Jean, feeling increasingly left out, explicitly flirts with Ted, taking advantage of his six-month-old break-up to drive him into a state of sexual confusion. ‘I’m tender, like a peach. I bruise easily,’ she declares, before continuing: ‘I orgasm easily too. About 20 seconds.’

But there’s more buried in the past than any of them want to admit to. Jean is haunted by an unspecified bad experience; Ted struggles with depression; and even extrovert jock Bo admits to having spent ‘about a week’ in hospital before going to Princeton. Nothing is ever fully explained. 

After scenes on an athletics track and in a locker room, expectations are raised for the big reveal. But the final two scenes are where the play falls apart. First comes a flashback sequence enacting a trauma – but since the three didn’t all know each other at the time, it’s unclear which characters they’re playing at this point in the past. Is this Bo and Ted remembering an event from their schooldays, in which Jean plays a different character? Or the other way around? Ultimately we don’t know whose trauma is being resurrected, and the twin props of a used tissue and a toilet do little to illuminate the situation.

This is followed by a long passage of recorded dialogue, played initially against a blacked-out stage. But poor audio quality and over-amplification make the voices hard to understand, and even harder to assign. We assume that these are the voices of attendees at the reunion, but the mute appearance of Jean obsessively polishing the lid of a toilet confuses the message rather than illuminating it.

With strong performances all round and tight direction from Maxi Himpe, the play delves into issues of trauma and victimhood with at times ferocious intensity. Nurit Chinn’s writing is confident and assured, and delves deep into the characters’ personalities. But the play’s failure to communicate its message in the final scenes leaves the audience baffled; in striving for theatrical novelty the denouement loses clarity. 

Written by: Nurit Chinn
Directed by: Maxi Himpe
Intimacy Coordinator/ Dramaturgy by: Sara Hazemi
Sound Designer: Marc Jablonski

Best of Three plays at the Etcetera Theatre until 1 August. Further information and bookings can be found here.