Strategic Love Play
Cupid Caught in Web
Strategic Love Play
by Miriam Battye
Paines Plough at The Soho Theatre until 23rd September, then on tour until 21st October
Review by Brent Muirhouse
The staging of Strategic Love Play immediately plays a strong hand and invites the audience to study the awkwardness of first date realities in 2023 from a full 360 degrees. Much like a world filled with multitudes of algorithms attempting to match and pair couples, we analyse the habits, reactions, and subtleties of sentences of the two characters – here named simply as ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’ – around which the play’s narrative quite literally revolves.
A packed Soho Theatre audience laps up the acerbic wit of writer Miriam Battye’s script from some of the earliest exchanges between our potential partners. Whilst the two perhaps embody an amalgam of different personalities, what strikes clearly is the difficulty of modern dating. It is a difficulty to which so many could directly or indirectly relate, with a micro-level uttering from one character seemingly enough to derail a date which would otherwise be a perfect ten.
The more brash, outspoken Woman (Letty Thomas) takes the lead in the conversation, throwing increasingly grand and energetic questions to Man (Archie Backhouse), who delivers some fantastically flabbergasted responses, as he tries to maintain his ‘nice person’ persona in the act of clearly being tested by Woman’s bold and frantic behaviour.
Yet what really sets this apart from many other contenders in the ‘finding-love-in-the-modern-world-is-hard’ rom-com-slash-drama (the trashier versions littering streaming and literature to mirror the ubiquity of apps, profiles, and directional swiping), is the genuine truth which both characters speak. The lines don’t feel scripted, and whilst they are clearly acting, the pair play off each other in such a natural way that this first date could’ve been being witnessed in the Coach and Horses across the road, not fictionally staged in the Soho Theatre.
With this truth comes sadness and melancholy – not twee crying face emoji, but an actual wrench at moments where had things been said slightly differently or reactions of a character been more honest, then the love story could progress. Essentially, whilst we witness just the seventy minutes that forms the first date, the remarkable work of the cast and Battye’s writing is that we actually watch a recurring interaction, mirrored no doubt by both past and future meetings of both Man and Woman with other prospective partners.
In less than an hour, we experience the mood of an entire, seemingly perpetual state of singleness and the gloom that both characters feel at wanting to change their circumstances, yet remaining so constricted by them. Whilst the message is not ‘you must be in a couple to be happy’, it is this mood that makes Strategic Love Play dramatically bittersweet.
Ultimately, director Kate Posner’s staging of Strategic Love Play is perfect in the way it captures the canon of chaotic conversation underscoring the hope and haplessness of much of modern dating. It stylises to make its points and to showcase Battye’s joyful script of wonderfully, wisely chosen words, therein depicting a masterful portrait of two young lovers.
Although to many Strategic Love Play will be so relatable, there is no moment where the narrative tries to say ‘everything is like this’. This leaves surprising heart and personality in the story of Man and Woman (though impersonally named). It is affecting and widely enjoyable by anyone to whom might only use Tinder, Bumble and Hinge in a sentence if they’d just seen somebody set fire to a beekeeper’s shed.
Being able to so adeptly bridge different audience experiences and create a rapturously received performance, meant there was nothing strategic about this reviewer’s pure love for the performance. Indeed, its best moments stayed with me long after leaving the theatre into the scorching September evening to head home, past countless capital city courtships, back to the streetlights of suburbia.
Brent Muirhouse, September 2023
Photography by Pamela Raith Photography
Mark Aspen 