Review: The Watch, The Glitch

For those who might miss wandering down Lower Marsh to watch new exciting work on the fringe, try a visit to The Glitch, a new Waterloo venue run by the creative team behind the former VAULT Festival, where the world premiere of The Watch, written by Isabella Waldron, doesn’t disappoint.

There is a watch: Hannah finally takes her broken and inherited wristwatch to a clockmaker. Yet it is during the ‘watching time’ that she mends herself with self-discovery and Zoe, the clockmaker.

Waldron, a semi-finalist for both the O’Neill National Playwrights Conference and the Papatango Prize, writes 60 minutes of mostly well-crafted joy. The dialogue is witty, tender and lyrical, featuring two engaging and seemingly unlikely characters whose narrative arc is gently played to reveal a queer love story, with exploration around identity, trust, intimacy and connection.

Hannah (Ciana Howlin) is an insomniac who meets Zoe (Kate Crisp) at her clockmaker’s workplace and then later, unexpectedly, on a hookup app. Their story is mostly told by Howlin, who seamlessly blends direct address to draw the audience into Hannah’s world with witty banter and funny one-liners. But she also reveals her vulnerability, her grief and the impact that her insomnia brings, with emotional skill and warmth. Howlin uses her authentic Irish voice when storytelling as Hannah and successfully offers glimpses of the other characters who inhabit her world – a beautifully messy and restless portrayal of a queer Catholic young woman who finds her peace (and sleep) when she finally opens up.

Crisp’s physically disciplined performance brings stillness and an almost ethereal energy to the two-hander, with the pair’s chemistry being both tender and sexy in The Glitch’s intimate space. Zoe, poetically dressed in Vinted period boots and long skirt, sleeps with loads of velvet and candles, and you might wonder if the script is heading towards the rom-com time-travelling trope of the protagonist falling in love with a human from the past, finally losing her yet finding themselves. The play avoids these stereotypes and instead navigates imperfect human connections that can be weird and beautiful.

Director Merle Wheldon works Isabella Sermiento’s simple set of four main geographical spaces defining the two pillars of the smallish space. She brings a subtle choreography to the piece with clever staging decisions: all social media is delivered by looking up to the lit ceiling, rather than characters endlessly demonstrating on their phones. In fact phones are absent from this piece about sleeping, and even though there is a physical watch, the play is instead concerned with the period between two sleep phases known as ‘the watch’. The audience sit in darkness or in candlelight during these periods, aided by Jack Hathaway’s lighting design. Yanni Ng’s soundscape underscores emotional states of the characters and is especially effective when Hannah finds joy with her past.

The hour is over and it is still daylight outside: time well spent watching fringe theatre, comforted by a rom-com evocation of warmth, joy and hope, maybe a small oxytocin increase, and then back into the ever moving world. This is a deceptively layered play about young queer love that is funny, tender and even sweet without being prescriptive or dull.

Written by Isabella Waldron
Directed by Merle Wheldon
Set Design by Isabella Sarmiento Abadia
Lighting Design by Jack Hathaway
Sound Design by Yanni Ng

The Watch run at The Glitch until Monday 9 June.