John is not having a happy birthday. When Lily rings, he is having a duvet day. It’s one of those days and to be honest there has been an extended succession of them.
It’s a long time since they have spoken and there are so many unheeded messages that she feels she would have more luck contacting Batman. The signals are all there that John isn’t coping, including ignoring a call from the care home about his father.
When she pops over to see him, feeling that a birthday is an important reminder that we should be happy that we were born, he is caught filming a final farewell message.
The play is performed gig theatre style, interspersing original songs with dialogue and movement. Track 1 sees John singing about reaching an age where everything is beige, but his self-loathing is not a new thing and he both doesn't care and doesn't know where to go from here.
Not wanting to be seen as needing help he claims he was in fact working on lines from a new play, a piece about an athletic dressage horse called Happy. Forced to run with this they riff on a plot, exposing some of their problems. Lily feels the need to help and is aware of the perils of the unreliable narrator, her own thoughts, as she has to manage panic attacks.
John and Lily have a back catalogue, there have been happier times, but it looks like that might all be in the past.
There are a number of songs that are excellent and brilliantly performed but don’t exactly feel integral to moving the story along. The structure throws a lot of theatrical ideas around (feeling like it is created for other theatre makers) and could be smoother.
Often touching and charming the play humorously yet sensitively says important things about the nature of depression and the importance of being there even when things can’t be fixed.
Show Times: 3 to 28 (not 18) August 2022 at 4.30pm.
Tickets: £6 to £13.50 (£12).
Suitability: 14+. Contains discussion of suicide and self-harm, strong language, reference to panic attacks, and flickering and strobe lighting.
Supporting The Listening Place