Theatre review: Games for Lovers

Ryan Craig wrote the English version of Tadeusz Slobodzianek’s Our Class, which would probably have been my show of the year in 2009, except I didn’t start doing an annual theatre roundup until the year after. It’s not a connection you would easily make from seeing his latest, the light, slight relationship comedy/drama Games for Lovers. Logan’s (Calum Callaghan) relationship with Jenny (Tessie Orange-Turner) is quickly going tepid, and he tries to reinvigorate it by inviting her to move in with him. Logan’s continuing pursuit of something that’s not really working means his best friend Martha (Evanna Lynch) can’t make a move on a mutual attraction neither of them has wanted to be the first to admit to for years. She answers an ad for a flatshare with deluded wannabe lothario Darren (Billy Postlethwaite) who, in something of a coincidence pileup, is both an old acquaintance Logan has recently reconnected with, and someone who crashed and burned when he tried his pickup techniques on Martha only a couple of weeks earlier.

As the quartet adjust to a new dynamic between them, they confront various underlying problems in the ways they try to meet and connect with people, in scenes that are generally entertaining, but really don’t seem to add up to much.

This is one of those shows with a certain disconnect between the story and its presentation, and I’m not sure where to lay the blame for that: Has Craig written a romantic drama with comic moments, which director Anthony Banks has misinterpreted and tried to stage as a full-on raucous comedy? Or was Craig aiming for big laughs all along, delivered too few, and Banks is dialling up the wacky presentation to try and make up for it? As with most of these things I suspect the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Both acts open with big bursts of energy as the cast arrive on Simon Scullion’s giant colourful playroom of a set, but the rest of the show rarely keeps those levels up. And while there’s a couple of really funny comic setpieces, they’re outnumbered by the punchlines that fall flat.

The evening is largely carried by the charismatic cast, whose charm distracts from the fact that their characters are generally pretty unpleasant people (Postlethwaite has always seemed fond of a particular kind of facial hair choice, so it’s inevitable he’d eventually play someone who is to all intents and purposes a 1940s spiv.) There’s an undercurrent that all of this poisonous behaviour comes from a common factor of all the characters having abandonment issues with their fathers, but it’s not fully explored. I found Games for Lovers enjoyable for the most part, if underpowered, but it’s one of those shows that leaves you wondering what the point was by the end.

Games for Lovers by Ryan Craig is booking until the 25th of August at the Vault Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 5 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Geraint Lewis.