*** Clever two-hander, but ultimately a bit studenty
Dan Bye is an intelligent young writer, and his short piece plays games with theatre and narrative, but never quite takes off.
Two actors appear on stage and appear to be making up a story as they go along (although of course it's all scripted), about a gay love triangle between a philosophy professor, one of his postgraduate students and the professor's poet boyfriend. Ollie Renton is a first-rate student actor both of comedy and the darker strain of material; he slightly eclipses his comrade Nick Jones, who is rather too eager to rely on his resonant voice. Writer/director Bye, twice winner of the Harold Hobson Student Drama Critic of the Year Award, has an intellect that's at once sharp and playful, but in the end this piece can't help feeling as if it was written as a game of ideas rather than as a work of drama in and for itself.
Written for divento.com
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights reserved.
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