Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons is an ingenious, absurdist romcom — review

Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons Lemons

Harold Pinter Theatre, London

We’re all left speechless sometimes, but for Oliver (Aidan Turner) and Bernadette (Jenna Coleman) that condition is perilous. They’re the couple at the heart of Sam Steiner’s playful romcom who are fumbling their way through an average relationship when a draconian law limiting every citizen to 140 words per day slices through their lives. Suddenly careless talk costs love. One elaborate smoothie order, one argument at work, one rambling phone conversation and they risk facing one another in the evening lost for words.

Steiner’s 2015 comedy arrives in the West End freighted with new meaning in the wake of lockdowns and partygate. The idea of life changing utterly overnight and of a government breaking its own laws no longer feels far-fetched. And there are big sociopolitical questions to do with power, protest, democracy, restriction of expression and whose words carry more weight.

But like so many ingenious absurdist comedies before it, Steiner’s play becomes more philosophical than political, asking questions about the role of language in our lives and the nature of intimacy. Sentenced to life with limited linguistic means, what would you do? Where would you spend your words — at work or at home? As the play jumps about in time, flashing from scenes before the ban to afterwards, we notice how imprecisely Oliver and Bernadette communicate when they have precious words to spare.

It’s a richly thoughtful piece, and with it Steiner joins an august list of playwrights — Beckett, Pinter, Churchill, Crimp — who have deliberately limited their own currency or undermined dramatic structure to talk about the absurdities and inequities of life. It makes considerable demands too of its cast, to which Coleman and Turner respond admirably.

In Josie Rourke’s production they circle one another in an empty space, the paraphernalia of normal life suspended behind them in Robert Jones’s set. Tiny adjustments in body language alert us to subtext and shifts in chemistry between them.

As drama, Lemons doesn’t quite get round the limitations to narrative and character development that it places on itself. But it’s sharply observant and, in the hands of Rourke, Coleman and Turner, quietly sad.

★★★★☆

To March 18 then touring to Manchester and Brighton, lemonstheplay.co.uk

Noises Off

Phoenix Theatre, London

When Michael Frayn first started writing farce, people asked him why he didn’t write about real life. “I couldn’t understand their question,” he told the Financial Times in 2010. “Did they really not have farce in their lives? Everyone loses control of their environment sometimes.”

That truth is at the heart of his dazzling comedy Noises Off, which packages a good farce inside a bad one to demonstrate the way this silliest of genres can so mercilessly express our deepest fears and existential panic. Now 40 years old, the play has lost little of its dizzy joy or deep poignancy.

In act one we see a hapless theatre company staggering through the final rehearsal of Nothing On, a shoddy bedroom farce driven by lust, jealousy and panic. In act two we watch a performance of Nothing On but from backstage, where those same emotions — now deeply felt — assail the cast, causing an even more acute state of chaos. In act three that backstage drama has invaded the stage, the genuine farce mapping on to the fictitious one with disastrous (hilarious) results.

It’s the pain behind the slapstick that strikes you in Lindsay Posner’s beautifully observed production. Felicity Kendal finds considerable poignancy in dithering Dotty, unable to recall even the most basic stage directions and so condemned, like a character from Greek myth, to keep repeating the same movements. There’s a sense of helpless hurt too from Pepter Lunkuse and Hubert Burton as the much-maligned stage managers.

But it’s also a production peppered with split-second comic timing and lovely performances. Tracy-Ann Oberman’s actress Belinda smiles beatifically at the audience as she ploughs doggedly on, delivering whole sections of dialogue to herself because her onstage partner has failed to materialise. Joseph Millson brings brilliant physicality to the increasingly manic Garry Lejeune, crashing through doors and down stairs so convincingly that you check for bruises.

Like Chekhov (whose work he has often translated), Frayn combines astute depiction of the cruelty and randomness of life with deep affection for humanity’s ability to keep on keeping on. And what’s most touching about Noises Off is the effort the cast make to keep their creaky old show on the road, Jonathan Coy’s fretful Frederick searching for existential meaning amid the chaos and Kendal’s Dotty valiantly trudging on with entirely the wrong props.

“Am I getting some of [the lines] right?” she calls anxiously to the director, an invisible godlike presence in the dark. “Some of them have a very familiar ring,” he responds, despondently — which is perhaps the best any of us can hope for.

★★★★☆

To March 11, atgtickets.com

Sound of the Underground

Royal Court, London

If Noises Off and Lemons play with theatrical structure, Sound of the Underground rips it up completely. This raucous, rebellious piece by non-binary writer Travis Alabanza, co-created with Debbie Hannan, doesn’t just bring London’s queer club scene to the Royal Court theatre; it interrogates what that means. How do you celebrate an underground culture on a mainstream stage and stay true to its spirit? How do you use conventional language to talk about the unconventional?

These ironies are at the heart of this often wild, often witty and determinedly messy takeover by eight burlesque and drag artists. After a brief prologue, in which they introduce themselves, we are plunged into what looks a pastiche of a Royal Court “kitchen sink” drama: our performers, (relatively) dressed down, assemble over mugs of tea and discuss unionising and taking action. It seems straightforward — until you realise that the action they are discussing is to do away with RuPaul, presenter of RuPaul’s Drag Race, for commercialising drag. Polite debate then gives way to onstage anarchy with the performers upending tables, brandishing dildos and hairdryers and driving around in a mini-tank.

Even for deliberate chaos, this section feels awkward. But soon the performers are dismantling the set and, with it, expectations for a piece of theatre. They discuss the economic realities of being an artist. They lament the way drag is being stripped of its radical nature to be marketed for corporate events, advertising and hen parties. They report the grim irony that popularity comes alongside an upsurge in violence and prejudice.

All traces of naturalism gone, they then bring the cabaret, with a series of flamboyant, funny and often filthy routines, impeccably performed. But the show is not finished with voicing its hard truths. Midway through the final act, drag king CHIYO destroys his own routine to point out that the very body that earns applause on stage becomes a target for trans hate crime on the streets. It’s outrageous, it’s confrontational, it’s celebratory — but above all, Sound of the Underground is heartfelt.

★★★★☆

To February 25, royalcourttheatre.com