Theatre review: The Ballad of Hattie and James

Leaving aside the fact that I've been unable to think of this as anything other than The Ballad of Hattie Jacques (and pretty much the first thing Jan said when he arrived at the theatre was that he's been exactly the same,) Samuel Adamson's The Ballad of Hattie and James comes with a good pedigree: The author returns to the Kiln having previously provided the venue with a mixed success in Wife, and the titular characters are played by Sophie Thompson and Charles Edwards. It's a moody, occasionally funny story of a friendship that goes very wrong but remains incredibly important throughout two people's lives, with all the makings of a really moving 90-minute play. The fact that it runs at an hour longer than that explains much about why the evening falls short of its potential.

The story jumps around in time between the 1960s and the 2050s, but the opening moments take place at St Pancras in early 2020, when a woman plays the theme from an obscure Nineties movie at the public piano in the station, is filmed by passers-by, and goes viral.

It ends up reuniting Hattie with the score's composer, and we next jump back to them meeting as 16-year-olds in the Seventies, when the local boys' and girls' schools team up for the Christmas musical. With typical pretension, James has convinced them to stage Benjamin Britten's opera Noye's Fludde and the pair bond even as they compete over their musical virtuosity. We also meet James' little sister Chrissie (Luna Valentine, alternating with Alivia Mihayo,) whose own story will end up crucially connected to theirs, in a way that ends their friendship.

It also contributes to Hattie's alcoholism and the fact that, when she plays the station piano, it's the first time she's touched a musical instrument in forty years. But there's also a major betrayal by him among the revelations over the course of their lives, and the very rare occasions they've crossed paths since their teen friendship. They're joined by Suzette Llewellyn, nicely using body language to differentiate between many supporting roles, while live music is played at one of the two onstage pianos by Maya Irgalina (alternating with Berrak Dyer.)

Quite how this works is a minor irritant in Richard Twyman's production - the basic conceit is that the pianist isn't there and is providing the music the characters are meant to be playing, but on a couple of occasions James seems to actually acknowledge her, which muddles things. A bigger problem is the structure of the play itself: Adamson likes stories that jump backwards and forwards in time, but with such a small cast and intimate central story, it means much of what there is to know about their lives is revealed too early, and the scenes dealing with these events are drawn out. Often we seem to be stuck in a half-hour argument in the Seventies, whose effects we're already aware of from scenes set this century.

It's not unusual for plot twists to come at the end of the first act, but here a revelation about the authorship of the central piece of music feels very consciously aware that something needs to bring the audience back after the interval (it... didn't look like this worked on everyone.) It's a shame because Thompson and Edwards are charming as you'd expect, but the play seems to be simultaneously doing too much and too little: Both characters are gay, but have a relationship full of ambiguous sexual tension. This could be a study of a platonic love story through the years, but it's hanging on an overstretched plot, and too often it feels like we're being slowly dragged through revelations the audience has long since cottoned on to, and with this largely being about how they've betrayed or mistreated each other it's at the expense of ever really liking or caring about them in the first place.

Also I can't speak for now but I lived in Surrey Quays in the 1990s and Hattie would have been wandering the aisles of Tesco, not Sainsbury's.

The Ballad of Hattie and James by Samuel Adamson is booking until the 18th of May at the Kiln Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Mark Senior.