Zinnie Harris was shortlisted for last year's Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright award for Further Than The Furthest Thing. Her new play is about a working-class couple who have difficulty getting it together. It's a reasonable idea, but the trouble is that the play never really gets it together either.
Even under the direction of the inimitable Richard Wilson, the story about a young mother getting out of jail and being met by her middle-aged partner has one foot in the theatrical grave.
The characters are perky enough with Nightingale, the middle-aged bloke, being a straightforward Essex man in shirt, tie, chinos and loafers. His Mondeo motor can only be an electronic beep away and he really is trying to get on top of his problem with semiaccidental domestic violence. Chase, meanwhile, is a gutsy jailbird who cannot seem to kick the habit of shopliftingor going back to Nightingale time after time. Both relate their side of the story the night of Chase's release and their two accounts reveal the conflicting sides of their doomed relationship.
Harris's writing is so fluently colloquial it could easily be mistaken for a transcript of EastEnders - with postwatershed expletives left in. Nothing wrong with that, except it doesn't carry any extra symbolic, emotional or psychological depth. Instead, the set of three monologues sound as though they've been written off the top of Harris's head. What's more, as a piece of drama, it's monologue format precludes the possibility of a longed-for, one-onone-confrontation between the two characters.
Richard Wilson's production takes the characters at face value and seems unable to provide further depth to Harris's scenario. First up, Christopher Fulford is a no nonsense nice guy who's not too bright and keen not to be misunderstood by Chase, his young son or indeed the expectant Royal Court audience. Red-haired, Jody Watson renders her part fiery and edgy, reporting with irritation Nightingale's attempts at trying to smother her unpredictable personality. She teams up amusingly with a voluminously breasted, chain-smoking hostel worker, but the point of it all remains imprisoned in Angela Davies's white design structured like a giant inverted comma.
Nightingale And Chase
