Theatre review: Shifters

Benedict Lombe's Shifters is one of those two-handers that follows a couple who seem perfect for each other but may or may not figure it out by the end of the show. And while it doesn't actually take place across the multiverse, there's musing about the choices we make and the different paths they could have led to, which makes it yet another show to give me flashbacks to Constellations, surely one of the most influential shows on British theatre so far this century. (I'm not knocking it, it's better than when it looked a couple of years ago like every young theatremaker was going to fill the stage with solemn, slo-mo Yaël Farber processions.) Part of Lombe's twist on the formula is that instead of starting as a rom-com and building to tragedy, Shifters' leads have tragedy built into their stories early on. Dre(am) (Tosin Cole) first notices Des(tiny)* (Heather Agyepong) as the only other black kid in his new school in Crewe.

Both are transplants from South London, both, it will later turn out, because of losses that threw their families into turmoil. They'll learn these things about each other later, but first Dre notices how well-spoken and forthright the middle-class Des is, and hatches a plan.

He convinces her to join him in the school's debate club, which is competing for a £2,000 prize. From teammates they become best friends, which builds to flirtation, an aborted attempt at a relationship around the time they leave school and both go back to London for University, and (in their early twenties) an actual relationship that goes well enough, but doesn't survive Des' move to America to pursue a successful career as an artist and illustrator of children's books. This story flashes back and forth with them meeting again at the age of 32, when Des briefly returns to the UK for the funeral of Dre's grandmother.

The timing of this premiere couldn't have been better, as another obvious comparison is One Day, so I'm sure there's plenty of audiences out there keen for their next decades-spanning will-they-won't-they story. I don't think they'd be disappointed by Lynette Linton's production or the chemistry between her cast. Cole is very charming and Agyepong has a natural comic ability (there's something quite staccato about her delivery that helps give comic lines their element of surprise.) But the emotional damage to their characters is also sensitively handled.

I liked the subtlety in the way Lombe tells us how much the two become parts of each other's lives - Dre's family is Nigerian, Des' Congolese and when, years after they break up, he realises his ambition of opening a restaurant, the food is a fusion of the two. On Alex Berry's shiny traverse set, Neil Austin's lighting also tells a lot through the ever-changing colours of the striplights surrounding them - I particularly liked how it's only background colour most of the time, but reflects off the actors' skin in the most intense scenes. Lyrically written, Linton's production brings this out nicely.

Shifters by Benedict Lombe is booking until the 30th of March at the Bush Theatre's Holloway.

Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Craig Fuller.

*the names, on the other hand, I doubt are deliberate Sandman references; Agyepong isn't dull enough to be Destiny of the Endless