Alex Price, Nicholas Burns and Laura Haddock in The Gift at Park Theatre. Credit Rich SouthgateThree scorchingly good performers, Nicholas Burns, Laura Haddock and Alex Price — all experienced film, TV and theatre actors — chew up and spit out the pithy epithets at a Gatling Gun pace, in this deliberately overwrought situation comedy, deftly directed by Adam Meggido on a neatly designed, modern apartment set, by Sara Perks.
We open with the three staring at a beribboned Henri Patisserie cake box, but there is obviously something amiss and the delivery must have been sent by someone who doesn’t care for Colin. But, given the multiplicity of potential candidates, who could it be? And does its arrival constitute a warning, a threat or is it simply an anonymous expression of a less-than-positive opinion?
As they mull over the unpleasant contents and consider the best course of action, the situation provides Brian with seemingly limitless opportunities for irreverent punning. There are occasional moments where less may have been more and it would be easy to level a criticism that the dialogue has been marginally over-written. But despite this minor flaw, the cast members bring a knowing finesse to proceedings and ooze the sort of familial familiarity required to pull-off this punchy piece, which resonates throughout with unspoken dissatisfaction. These undertones are particularly noticeable with Laura Haddock’s long-suffering Lisa, whose baleful glances strongly indicate that she has had enough of merely drifting and is eager to join life’s superhighway.
The banter and cajoling jauntily meanders in a play riddled with grown-up versions of student jokes, mother-in-law jokes, time-lag gags (G for Golf and Zsa Zsa Gabor) and an appropriately mumbled nod to TV’s The Wire. A couples’ retreat is cut short due to headline revelations about Colin’s misadventures (albeit they were splashed across the front page of the Hackney Gazette), and we learn that mother isn’t an especially good cook, nor does she care for football. This firecracker, scattergun approach to dialogue could fall foul of its own ambition, but in the main on press night, delivery benefitted from a strong sense of timing, resulting in an extremely positive audience reaction to the constrained on-stage zaniness.
Runs at Park Theatre’s main stage until 1st March.
