Theatre review: Then, Now & Next

With the new Elephant venue already feeling well-established, it feels like ages since I went back to the Borough building that's been Southwark Playhouse's home for the last decade (I can only take so many Macbeths, OK?) But not all the new musicals have been shipped to the new venue, and The Large premieres Then, Now & Next, a first venture into writing for current Phantom Jon Robyns, and fellow musical theatre actor Christopher J Orton (book, music and lyrics.) It is, needless to say, a lockdown project, the two actors having decided to make a more serious attempt at an idea they'd toyed with when they were in Spamalot together. The result is a low-key chamber musical about Alex (Alice Fearn) and the most serious relationships of her twenties and thirties. We meet her with Peter (Peter Hannah,) with whom she has a young son.

The action moves back and forwards through her story, so we also get to meet the great love of her life, Stephen (Joaquin Pedro Valdes.) It soon becomes apparent that Stephen died, and Alex has never been able to fully let go of him.

This has been the major obstacle to her relationship with the sweet and goofy Peter, who’s quickly established as a good husband and father who’s been a calming presence since she first met him, defusing an uncomfortable situation by doing magic tricks when he realised she was being fired in public. However she’s turned down seven marriage proposals from him and he’s pretty much resigned to being considered “the boring one” compared to the dashing American Stephen, with whom she travelled the world.

Although technically in the works for a decade, having only really been seriously begun being written in 2020 makes a 2023 debut comparatively speedy by musical theatre standards, and I can’t say the show doesn’t feel underdeveloped in several areas. It’s basically fine, with pleasant enough songs but nothing to really stick in the memory – the standout number is Fearn and Valdes’ big engagement song, but there’s no song list in the programme so I can’t tell you what it’s called. It really struggles to make you know why you should care about any of the story though.

Despite winning performances from the three leads, it’s hard for them to make much of their characters. Stephen and Peter are basically both very nice boyfriends, and not in as different ways as they’re made out to be. Although, is theatre trolling me now? Because this is the third Yoda impression I’ve seen in as many months. I repeat, it’s a very lazy shorthand to let us know that a character is funny and, let’s face it, actually lets us know very much the opposite. As usual it threw me completely out of the moment for some time*. Regardless, I could eventually see past that to what we were meant to make of Peter, and I still find it problematic that at the centre of the story is an eight-year relationship where it’s almost explicitly accepted that one partner openly views the other as a distant second-best to her dead ex, and the other tamely accepts it despite them having a child together†.

Julie Atherton’s production is affable enough, although a bit busy – there’s a hell of a lot of furniture getting wheeled around the stage in circles during scene changes. Given the discordant music that accompanies this, I think it’s meant to reflect journeying through time, but it’s all a bit more frantic than the actual story. There’s also a discrepancy in tone between the leads and the supporting characters, although it works out for the best: Where Alex and the men in her life are pretty low-key, everyone else is a bit more broadly-drawn and cartoonish. But Tori Allen-Martin, who plays all the women alongside Justin Brett as all the men, is very often the show’s comic highlight, rescuing it from getting too introspective. Ultimately Then, Now & Next is watchable enough, but it’s ironic in a story which sees Alex learn not to dismiss her life as “just fine” and find the passion in it, that “just fine” ends up being the best descriptor of the show itself.

Then, Now & Next by Christopher J Orton and Jon Robyns is booking until the 29th of July at Southwark Playhouse Borough's Large Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours including interval.

Photo credit: Pamela Raith.

*also has Hannah, or anyone involved in the production, actually seen Jaws? Because “you're gonna need a bigger boat” is famously a drily understated line, not delivered like Shaggy jumping into Scooby-Doo’s arms

†never mind couples’ therapy, they’ll need family therapy for when the kid twigs how much his mum wishes he’d had a different dad.