Review: Time and Time Again, Seven Dials Playhouse

Time and Time Again is an intimate play telling the story of best friends Becca (YY Long) and Zoe (Stephanie Renae Lau), as they go from ten to thirty-year-olds experiencing love, university, heartbreaks, visa difficulties, protests in their native Hong Kong, and other hardships that life throws in their way. The play tackles the evolution of friendship in such difficult moments, but bites off more than it can chew in under an hour.

The play starts with a voiceover of the two girls listing off all the things they want in life, from which university they want to go to, the jobs they aspire to, to how their respective weddings will look and how many children they will have. The list is extensive, and perhaps that is the first indicator of all the play wants to tackle. The events in Becca and Zoe’s lives are delivered in a non-linear manner, with the two actresses expertly changing their voices, postures, and attitudes to match the age that they are representing. The different scenes are subtly linked – for example, the promise Zoe makes to Becca to be her bridesmaid as a pre-teen is followed by the moment in which the two are buying the dresses for the wedding at thirty. This makes their lives easy to follow and leaves little room for confusion, which is a commendable aspect for a non-linear story. However, there are so many scenes crammed into the runtime that the audience cannot fully grasp the importance or the sentimental value of each event before the characters are thrust into a different issue.

As they grow apart, both girls’ drastically different experiences clash with each other: Zoe struggles to thrive in England while Becca gets involved in some type of protest that is given very little explanation. Eventually, the play suffers from a lack of thematic focus that would otherwise help audiences feel invested in their friendship surviving. I came out of the play without understanding what it was that made these characters remain friends for twenty years.

The staging is minimal, with multiple chairs that are arranged to represent beds, tables, clothes racks, and more. There is a lot of miming involved to complete the scenery, aided by Ines Ruiz’s sound design, so the settings are perfectly clear for all to witness. The vibe created by the staging, along with Henry Rehberg’s lighting design and Alexander Nicholls’ score, is one of profound intimacy, which matches the material very well.

Long and Lau spend the whole hour on stage, miming their way through twenty years of life. Lau is the stronger actress of the two, able to fully commit to each emotion expressed and capturing moments of vulnerability beautifully. Through her acting and the attempted emotional weight of the script itself, she comes out as the true protagonist of the play, with Long’s Becca unfortunately falling behind. The scenes in which the two are having fun and enjoying life show a great deal of chemistry between the two actresses, who lose themselves in the happiness of the moment. The more serious and tragic scenes, however, feel stiffer than the rest, which takes away from the gravitas of those sections.

Time and Time Again strives to depict all the complexities of growing up, but there are so many that it loses focus and struggles to retain the emotional investment it needs to fully succeed. It is a commendable effort with many aspects to praise, but it needs to slim down its scope and focus on a central struggle to reach the heights that I believe it can.

Directed & devised by: Ioana Pitic
Lighting design by: Herny Rehberg
Sound design by: Inés Ruiz
Composed by: Alexander Nicholls

Time and Time Again runs until Tuesday 22 July at the Seven Dials Playhouse.