An Intervention

Mike Bartlett plays are enough of a draw to send me to Watford on a Wednesday afternoon during a tube strike! This one’s completely different from last week’s at the Almeida, though – a two-hander about friendship.

We first meet them when they’ve known each other for three years. She sees them as ‘best friends’; he’s not so sure. She berates him for failing to turn up at an anti-war demo; he doesn’t see the point. Over three more scenes, we watch the relationship develop (or not) through his marriage and fatherhood until, in the fifth and final scene, he gets a bit of a shock when he calls to seek support and refuge. It’s a very true representation of friendship, particularly the differing views of its strength and the impact of other relationships.

Played in front of the curtain, a bit like Morecambe & Wise (as Bartlett requests in his stage directions), or on a black box stage, it all hangs on the performances and Rachael Stirling & John Hollingworth are excellent individually, with great chemistry when together; they seem like real friends. James Grieve’s production has to move from playful banter to confession to tragedy and it does so with great delicacy.

Intimate Bartlett (like Cock) rather than epic Bartlett (like King Charles III); satisfying theatre nonetheless.