Review: A GOOD TIME WAS HAD BY ALL, The Hope Theatre

When a group of friends from university get together after years of being apart, their reunion swiftly descends into a dinner from hell. They've grown up, some quicker than others, and now all have real jobs and responsibilities.

Chris (Cameron Wilson) is getting married to Georgia (Holly McComish), the exuberant, shrill tag-along and bridezilla-in-the-making. Anna (Hattie Kemish) works for the BBC. Liz (Bethany Monk-Lane) has just returned from Syria, where she was a reporter. James, Chris's fellow policeman, Anna's boyfriend, and mutual uni chum, is late as usual.

It doesn't take long to discover that something fishy in going on. The evening goes awry, the proverbial bread is broken, and their fates are changed forever. A Good Time Was Had By All is a stylistic experiment with the addition of predictable shock value. The final allegory comes in strong, but doesn't redeem a superficial approach nor makes much sense.

Writer and director Sam Smithson, explaining the genesis of the play in the program, says that he essentially wrote it for kicks during lockdown but never saw it as something that could be performed until Not Quite Ready, the company he's co-producer at, read it. Running at 75 minutes, the piece cracks in the middle, starting with a rather civilised gathering and following with an oneiric, surreal explosion of nonsensical imagery.

The social critique that should pervade and haunt the text is merely a shallow shadow. Police brutality, sexual assault, domestic abuse, and even the war in Syria receive very little exploration while they should be the focus.

Smithson places his characters around a table. They abruptly stand up and change seats in an attempt at avoiding visual stillness as they speak, but the figurative game of musical chairs ends up being as unnatural as the literal one the guests randomly start.

It's a play of blank stares, shocked looks, mocking smirks, tense smiles, and general discomfort - but it's all for show. The huge difference between the two acts (it runs with no interval, which is a great choice) comes off as plain weird. The characters are limited in their depth too, and the actors do their best with the limitations.

Monk-Lane lights up when she gets a chance to talk about the bloodshed and horror she saw in Syria, but freezes when they touch her. Kemish is a snarky, disillusioned TV professional with resentful romantic feelings.

McComish acts like the life of the party as the ditsy, overly excited young woman who's unaware of the looks of disapproval coming from the others. Wilson, regretfully, doesn't connect with the policeman with a past as a "pill-popping party boy", giving a half-hearted performance.

All in all, the piece has problems, but it's not a lost cause. A more decisive dive into the politics of its themes and a more thorough investigation might save it from the precipice it stands on. As of right now, it only has faint echoes of Bryan Fuller's Hannibal - if the title character shopped in Primark.

Smithson says that the show changes every night and no performance is alike. We sure hope so.

A Good Time Was Had By All runs at The Hope Theatre until 23 April.

To post a comment, you must register and login.