My sister, who saw him on
The One Show the other day, says that Matthew Perry
comes across as very witty and spontaneous in interviews. So it's interesting that
he chose not to utilise any of that in his playwrighting debut. The star of
Six
White Complainers has based
The End of Longing on his own struggles with
alcoholism, but says his lead character in the play is based neither on him nor his
sitcom character. I can't vouch for the former but as for the latter, Perry himself
stars as a sarcastic New Yorker with a very small circle of friends; let's call him
Bandler Ching. Bandler meets a pair of female friends in a bar, and starts a
relationship with Stephanie (Jennifer Mudge.) Her friend Stevie (Christina Cole)
turns out to be shagging Bandler's best friend Joseph (Lloyd Owen,) in one of many
such coincidences - there may be the bright lights of a cityscape behind Anna
Fleischle's set, but the characters keep bumping into one of the other three people
they know.
