Theatre review: Barcelona

Taking two Netflix stars closely associated with Madrid and Paris and throwing them together in a third European city, Bess Wohl's Barcelona is an entertaining story so full of red herrings that even trying to describe a genre for it feels like a spoiler. Its plot does hinge on quite a lot of elements that probably don't bear too much close inspection - I hear that hen dos have got a lot more expensive and elaborate since we took Alex to an Eighties disco night, but was a 12 hour+ flight each way for a hen weekend considered normal a decade later in 2009, when the play is set? Well that's what's brought Irene (Lily Collins) to Barcelona, where she's slipped away from her group to hook up with the man she'd been flirting with in a bar, Manuel (Álvaro Morte.) He's brought her back to a small apartment with a great view of Sagrada Família, a beautiful horizon like a jewel in the sun.

Because it would be a very different kind of play if they proceeded to bone for the next 90 minutes, they start the celebration by Manuel sticking her foot in his mouth, but are put off their stride by Irene being drunker and sicker than she realised, and by the time she's come out with some classic American tourist pronouncements he's too irritated to initiate anything again - there's something very fun about an American playwright fully embracing all the stereotypes about her nation's superiority complex and lack of interest in the outside world.

They proceed to talk, variously arguing, flirting and supporting each other as they discover the difficult things each has been trying to keep from the surface. Star casting gets a bad rap sometimes (some of it from me) but I do think that more often than not the performers end up proving on stage why they became stars in the first place, and this pair's charisma certainly translates to the stage from the moment they crash onto Frankie Bradshaw's set, enthusiastically snogging: Collins is a good physical comedian with a side of vulnerability, the older Morte takes the quiter role as guide and inspiration but gradually revealing his own demons.

Lynette Linton's production does a good job of teasing out these demons and making us wonder just where this seemingly innocuous scene will go: It turns out Manuel has brought Irene back to an otherwise entirely empty building; early on they let the music play (aah,) make the voices sing as they emotionally bond over an aria, but later both music and lights go as the electricity is cut off - turns out the block is due to be demolished the next day. We've also been conditioned for something creepier by the pre-show sound design - I suppose it's an achievement to make Ian forget his acrophobia in the Upper Circle, but if it's done by Duramaney Kamara & XANA's discordant cacophony making him nauseous for a different reason that's probably not something to crow about too much. By the time Gino Ricardo Green's projections start making the shadows move differently from the people casting them, we're primed for the rom-com to turn into a serial killer thriller or ghost story.

Which is all very well done but ultimately proves the show's downfall, as that spoilery genre description would turn out to be "comedy-drama." The emotional core of the story is well-performed and moving, but by the time the actual plot twist comes about it's been telegraphed pretty clearly, and feels anticlimactinc after we've been set up to expect a major rug-pull. Jai Morjaria's lighting design has beautifully taken us through the night but as the sun rises and the bells are ringing out, what is at its heart a moving conclusion comes with the niggling feeling that the story's oversold and undervelivered.

Barcelona by Bess Wohl is booking until the 11th of January at the Duke of York's Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.