Review: And If The Surface Tension Breaks, Lion and Unicorn Theatre

Sometimes a play just resonates. You see yourself in it, feel a strange kinship with a character, making it all the more personal. It’s almost as if it were written for you, about you, as if the writer had somehow drilled into your head and dragged out those darkest thoughts you try to hide away. Or maybe it’s that you and the writer just have more in common than you realise.

David Brady‘s And If The Surface Tension Breaks takes place in that fraction of a second before it all ends. Not just one life, every life that ever existed. It’s extreme, it’s a big, bold statement and yet it still does what Proforca Theatre do best, make it deeply personal. It’s about one normal person living what is just a normal life, with its up’s and down’s, although granted, there are a few more down’s for this one. The last person left, if only for a fraction of a second, and as the neurons in his brain send one last electric pulse, he is met by three strange characters, or ‘observers, instigators, passengers’ as they suggest to him. It does have a slight feel of the three spirits visiting Scrooge as they take him back to memories he does not want to confront, moments that dictate the path his life was to take afterwards. It risks being rather saccharine, and perhaps some will see it that way, but for others it will sing loudly.

Conor Rowlett is the one having these last moments, and he does a great job of expressing his anxieties and fears that have controlled his whole life. But it’s the trio of Ben Watts, Kitty Evans and Emily O’Mahony who really bring it all to life as they circle and push and pull at him, driving him to confront the hard facts that he just doesn’t want to admit. The three work superbly in unison, at times feeling like Dickens’ three spirits and at others more the three witches of Macbeth. They are certainly three devilish imps there to both torment and frustrate their victim, before acting as his confident and a shoulder to cry upon.

David Brady‘s writing is full of the anxieties and worries that we all feel at times. But it’s here that the play hits hardest for someone whose life has been dictated by such anxieties, decisions left unmade so as to avoid any possible hurt further down the line. It is at times painful to witness, but at others a relief that here is someone who knows what it is to suffer such mental health torments.

But it’s not all doom and gloom, rather it’s almost the opposite. It is playful, the trio sharing the humorous lines around, whilst the reference to Kentish Town Station is one anyone who travelled to Lion And Unicorn in 2024 will not fail to laugh at! But it is hopeful and forgiving as well, leaving us with a sense that even at the very end there can be redemption and change.

We always talk about representation on the stage and how important it is to be able to see ourselves in the characters we watch. Ultimately, that is perhaps the reason And If The Surface Tension Breaks hit me so hard, because in Charlie I see elements of myself. That person scared of making a wrong decision and so instead deciding not to decide. But more importantly the hope and positivity that comes at the end is also something that speaks volumes, saying that even as the world crumbles around us, there is still a chance to make it all good in the end.

Written and directed by: David Brady
Movement direction by: Mark Conway 
Intimacy Coordinator: Stella Moss
Lighting and Sound design by: Proforca Theatre
Dramaturgy by: Georgie Bailey
Music by: Olivia Thompson
Produced by: Proforca Theatre

And If The Surface Tension Breaks plays at Lion and Unicorn Theatre until 1 March.