Instructions for a Teenage Armageddon is by any standards a stonkingly successful debut having had a West End run, a book adaptation and now soon to be on television screens, so it is inevitable that the première of Rosie Day's new play was bound to be met with some expectation.
(This Is Not A) Happy Room finds Laura, Simon and Elle gather in an off-season Blackpool hotel with a sense of déjà vu for their father's third wedding.
It does not take long for the largely estranged trio to drop adult civilities and revert to former patterns of behaviour, backbiting and bickering with sharply funny putdowns and smart one-liners. The arrival on the scene of wife number one, Esther, their mother, reveals that the apples have not fallen far from the tree when it comes to crafting a compact dismissive remark.
Hours pass as the siblings wait for the betrothed to arrive for their wedding rehearsal, and amongst the laugh-out-loud mudslinging, hints can be found as to what holds together human rights lawyer Laura, hypochondriac middle child Simon and film actor Elle. But when the wedding breakfast is by necessity recycled into a wake following a fatal car crash, the build-up of petty hostilities is displaced by long-held hurts and resentments.
With (This Is Not A) Happy Room, Day once again displays a masterly talent for finding comedy in the most painful of places, seeing off any notion of comfy family sitcom—notwithstanding dottily forgetful elderly Aunt Agatha—with volleys of cutting barbs.
Once again though, she has also front-loaded the play with her best work. Toes curled when a psychotherapist wedding-come-funeral guest cod-splains family dynamics by reference to Philip Larkin's now classic poem.
The end unravels rather than coheres with a handful of not wholly successful moments of connection and a series of secrets hastily revealed and swiftly fled from, all things that Hannah Price's otherwise tight direction could do little about.
Nonetheless, it is in the later half that Amanda Abbington is able to come into her own, flawless, as Esther. Jonny Weldon is first amongst sibling equals as attention-seeking man-child Simon, Day taking the role of dippy Elle whose world view is absorbed from TikTok and Andrea Valls's (bizarrely) relatable uncertain new mother, Laura.
Credit to them that what lingers is not the play's imperfections but its vital comedy. This is one of the funniest shows of the year so far. This is a room you want to be in.