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Bear with me: Sun Bear @ParkTheatre

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If The Light House is an uplifting tale of survival, Sarah Richardson’s Sun Bear gives a contrasting take on this. Sarah plays Katy. We’re introduced to Katy as she runs through a list of pet office peeves with her endlessly perky coworkers, particularly about coworkers stealing her pens. It’s a hilarious opening monologue that would have you wishing you had her as a coworker to help relieve you from the boredom of petty office politics.  But something is not quite right in the perfect petty office, where people work together well. And that is her. And despite her protesting that she is fine, the pet peeves and the outbursts are becoming more frequent. As the piece progresses, maybe the problem lies in a past relationship, where Katy had to be home by a particular hour, not stay out late with office colleagues and not be drunk enough not to answer his calls. Perhaps the perky office colleagues are trying to help, and perhaps Katy is trying to reach out for help. It has simple staging

The generation gap as an overlong play: Love, Love, Love


Love, Love, Love by Mike Bartlett is now playing at the Royal Court. It's an epic drama about Kenneth and Sandra who meet in the sixties and start a fiery relationship. They have two children, divorce and then retire. But all is not well and it is the harsh economic realities that become the focus of the play. It has some sort of impact as people were filing out of the theatre Saturday night muttering amongst themselves, "Oh well, we will have to buy our children a house" or "I'm never going to be able to afford to buy on my salary".

A play that tackles the theme of the baby boomer generation as the locust generation is an interesting premise. But at three hours you will leave the theatre wondering if they could have made it shorter and called it Love, Love. As one particularly loud American couple noted in the foyer after the first act, it was fifty minutes that could have been told in five. The characters and more caricatures and there are no real surprises in this piece. Everything is telegraphed well before it happens which becomes tedious and curiously unexpected for an award-winning play.

Of course the cast are engaging and lovely to watch and they try hard to keep things moving. And moving from awful-looking wigs and retro clothing of the 1960s and 1990s to current fashion of 2011. Holding the piece together is the hard work of Ben Miles and Victoria Hamilton as the couple who are into each other and not much else... Sam Troughton has the thankless task of being the moody brother in the first act who gives menacing stares. You could be forgiven it was because Miles is wearing in open robe and has a much better physique... Troughton disappears for the rest of the show and so you do keep wondering whatever happened to him...

All told it is three hours of your life... But there are two intervals of good length and the bar staff are lovely and friendly... Hit back with the gin to keep you going and you'll leave the theatre wondering what the property prices nearby are like... It runs until 9 June.

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