SUNNYMEAD COURT (The Actors Centre/Tristan Bates Theatre)****

 

By Cal

Link: | Theatre | The Actors Centre

Available until: 3^rd January 2021 at 11.59pm.

Marie and Stella live in adjacent flats with adjacent balconies. They’re aware of each other, but they don’t really know each other. Gone are the times when people are friends just because they live near to each other. Now, we go further afield and seek out the people we want to be friends with. Besides, if Marie and Stella have any feelings for each other, it’s probably more annoyance than anything. Loud music in the morning is seldom welcome!

But then, everything changed. Lockdown happened and although having a lot of contact with your neighbours is obviously not encouraged for everyone’s safety, many people found they were playing more of a role in their local community, whether it was helping out their vulnerable neighbours (many, but not all, of whom would be elderly) or seeing each other over the balcony wall.

This happens for Marie and Stella. They glimpse one another over the balcony wall and feel a curiosity that wasn’t there before. A curiosity that grows. They don’t speak, but each watches what the other does on the balcony as their curiosity grows into liking; even affection.

Their connection (to call it a friendship would be misleading) gives them moments of happiness they badly need. Their lives have changed. Stella is also caring for her mother, who uses a ventilator. Neither of them knows what the future will bring, and when. Looking over the balcony wall gives them the happiness their lives are missing. And the happiness grows.

Throughout the play, the two actors address the audience. They share their thoughts, feelings, situations and memories. And of course, increasingly, they speak of the woman on the other balcony. Wondering about her. Learning when she is most likely to be there. Doing things which they believe, from observation, will make the other one happy.

It’s a long time before they actually met, but writer Gemma Lawrence, who also plays Marie, builds the friendship up gradually and movingly. There are some truly beautiful moments and some absolutely hilarious moments. There are also some utterly mundane ones – because this is a story of two people’s lives. Of course their lives are mundane sometimes, even now they have each other… kind of. It’s a fascinating, warm and ironic story about human beings and the ways in which they can connect.

Gemma Lawrence and Remmie Milner (Stella) play their characters well, both speaking naturally and comfortably to the audience, showing an impeccable sense of timing as they act out the two separate but interconnected lives, and a great sense of comedy. The two personalities could perhaps have been slightly stronger as they are very similar in lots of ways, but they are both likeable and funny.

It’s a very enjoyable and interesting play and it’s great to see another play set in the lockdown world we know which is about more than just lockdown.