As a high-concept romcom this two-hander is often engaging and amusing, but both the beginning and ending don't quite work.Rating
Good
A very high-concept, meet-cute romcom, While We Wait is a two-hander where both characters are in deeply unusual and quite unpleasant situations from the get-go. Trudy (Kirsten Callaghan) has the worst of it as she’s been told she has less than a year left to live, but the moment NHS nurse Lee (Ricky Oakley) sets eyes upon her time slows down for him so that every second which passes feels like ten.
The understandably highly sceptical Trudy seems to think that this is just Lee hitting on her and, given their initial meeting, it’s easy to understand why. While Trudy is reluctantly visiting A&E to give a blood sample, Lee gabbles away and teases her and acts inappropriately in such a manner that he’d almost certainly receive a written warning for his behaviour if she were to complain. It’s a little hard to understand why she doesn’t as she seems genuinely offended by him, until the two are suddenly bantering away and even being vaguely flirty.
It’s a confusing opening given that the following fifty minutes of the play is a rather charming romantic comedy. Lee calms down from his previously hyperactive-toddler-who’s-overdosed-on-sugar state and Trudy warms to his inquisitive nature. Soon the duo are swapping anecdotes and it’s light-hearted and sweet-natured, with the vast majority of jokes landing, and suddenly it’s understandable why they’re enchanted by each other.
The script is a little clumsy though, and the set ups and pay offs could have been handled with a little more care. When the shy and retiring Trudy admits that she’s lived a life of regrets and has never been skydiving, travelled or even eaten at that restaurant where you’re plunged in to darkness before taking a bite, each and every one of those scenarios then plays out in a likeably amusing but never particularly surprising manner.
Given the high-concept set up, the play does tackle some big themes, and both characters deliver monologues which explore how and why they feel about existence. It lacks subtlety though; some of the monologues feel like TED Talks which have been rehearsed to death, rather than the natural banter of a couple who are supposed to be slowly falling in love with each other. Yet it’s intriguing to see such themes investigated in a play like this, which mostly pleasingly avoids rote and obvious romcom cliches.
Yet the final twenty minutes sees the play become unstuck again, and it suffers from the same problem as the opening as these characters start acting in ways that don’t feel believable. They make life-changing decisions which go unchallenged by each other, and a poorly handled time jump seems implausible and absurd.
It’s frustrating because for two thirds of the show Doe Wilmann creates a very intelligent, appealing romcom, and once the characters begin to bond, seeing how they help each other through the difficulties that life throws at them makes for a very enticing work. Right now, it’s only a quite good play, but hopefully after another draft or two it could be much, much more than that.
Written by: Doe Wilmann
Directed by: Scott Le Crass
You can read an interview with the writer, Doe Wilmann, here.
While We Wait plays at the Arches Lane Theatre until Saturday 7 March.
