The oblique strokes //either side of the title of this playlet// perhaps best sum up the indirect slant it takes on its storyline.
It’s a 60-minute monologue in which Reagan is determined to recall just how he ended up with a blood-stained face, and T-shirt, after a first date. But this involves detection littered with more props than a game of Cluedo – a steak knife and broken glass for starters. Plus any number of false assumptions, or red herrings, to do with neurodiversity, gender and the basic human need for acceptance. A lot to unpack in an hour.
The play has grown out of the Keswick venue’s digital theatre initiative, originally as a co-production with the long-established Graeae company that puts disabled diversity centre stage. With fellow producers Liverpool Dada Fest’s Nickie Miles-Wildin and Grace Ng aboard, and a highly-elaborate video, captioning, lighting and sound crew, it’s now an ‘access all areas’ performance.
Without wishing to sound reductive in any way, writer and performer Adam Fenton’s play could almost be re-titled The Curious Incident of The Date Night That Went Wrong, since it borrows something of the stage adaptation style of Mark Haddon’s novel about a young neurodiverse detective. What it adds is an ornate sub-titling style across the back of Hannah Sibai’s simple white box setting.
Occasionally the captioning punctures the punchlines of some of Reagan’s witty musings, since audiences can read them before they hear them. But they also become intentionally scrambled with bursts of static, as he struggles with a mind that is like “a bowl with holes in it!”
It’s a committed and convincing performance, although one that needs to sometimes pace itself to its audience’s reaction, and is ideally suited to the intimate confines of TBTL’s studio space.