At his grandmother’s funeral, Dre, 32 years old and Black-British of a Nigerian family who grew up on a council estate, unexpectedly finds himself facing Des, the girl of Congolese background with a neurologist father to whom he once was so close. In a single act lasting about 100 minutes, Benedict Lombe’s play explores their past relationship and current situation going right back to when he first saw her in sixth-form in a school where she was the first other pupil to look the way that he did.
Now he is London restauranteur, married with children, and she lives in New York with a lover and has a successful career as a conceptual artist, but Des was Dre’s first love and something still draws them together.
Tosin Cole, best know for his film work and television roles (including the Doctor’s assistant in Dr Who), presents a smiling and easy-going guy putting youthful insecurities behind him, but he is clearly jolted by Des’s arrival into remembering what might have been, while Heather Agyepong gives Des a lively intelligence, a girl whose feelings can set her dancing but who can also be subject to panic attacks. It is a pairing that produces real chemistry between them. While looking back at their past, this is a story that could still take a new turn.
As the action persistently switches between now and different thens and between Dre’s and Des’s different perspectives, the transitions are marked by colour changes in the tubes of light that frame the traverse acting space. The rest of Alex Berry’s set is mainly black boxes, which substitute for furniture and store some key props. This simple staging and Neil Austin’s lighting concentrate everything on the actors. They are helped by Benedict Lombe’s dialogue, which feels like real speech, while Lynette Linton’s direction shapes the scenes to give dramatic edge to this quirky love story. Dre declares that you cannot control love, but perhaps Des can.
Along with the romcom (and there are a lot of laughs), it embraces grief at loss, whether by death or desertion, and introduces issues such as how memory shapes our reality and how memory itself is altered; there is even a discussion of the end of the world and what may come after. At 16, they both joined the school debating society; some things don’t change.
Shifters makes you think as well as invest interest in the emotions of this pair and their feelings. These are performances to relish, and Benedict Lombe is a writer to look out for.