Review: PRIVATE VIEW, Soho Theatre
Ciara Robinson
Private View arrives at Soho Theatre carrying a level of anticipation, shortlisted for major playwriting prizes and framed as a …”sexy, cerebral dive into queer love, coercive control, and connection.” What unfolds is a confident two-hander with moments of real emotional electricity, though it leaves the sense that it hasn’t fully decided what it wants to say.
The story explores the intense pull between two women whose lives collide at a private view. One an artist with inherited stability; the other, a younger academic working in physics and philosophy. Their relationship becomes a site of desire, insecurity, pleasure, fear, and a kink-inflected power play that edges toward something darker. Quantum physics functions as a metaphor for an encounter that fundamentally alters both of them, though the ideas hover more than they deepen. While there are moments that build and challenge the fatal flaws of the relationship, an abrupt ending leaves some thematic threads unresolved.
Jess Edwards’ writing is intelligent, though overwritten at times. There is intentional repetition in the language and a level of objectification between the characters, which underscores the dynamics of power and intimacy, but a little more space might allow the deeper tensions to breathe. Patricia Allison and Stefanie Martini inhabit this early, intoxicating phase of the relationship with commitment and nuance, capturing the thrill, the testing of boundaries, and the messy interplay between desire and autonomy. The contrast in their identities and professions, creative inheritance versus academic rigor, creates a natural tension, highlighting how privilege, knowledge, and social positioning shape attraction. These elements add depth to the relationship, suggesting potential stakes that could have been explored further.
The production surrounding them is confident and carefully crafted. Georgia Wilmot’s shifting bedroom set evokes the enclosed, self-constructed world of a new relationship. Catja Hamilton’s lighting punctuates key emotional beats, while Josh Anio Grigg’s sound design shapes the atmosphere with a beat and bass line that sits in the body. Ingrid Mackinnon’s movement and intimacy direction adds a clear physical vocabulary, translating subtle emotional shifts into embodied language and clean transitions to move the relationship through its paces in a clever way without the need for extensive set change and entrances and exits . Under Annie Kershaw’s direction, the production maintains a taut rhythm, holding tension while allowing moments of tenderness to emerge, keeping the dynamic precariously balanced even when the writing doesn’t fully commit to its darker edges.
There is much here that works: a convincingly contained world for two, moments of surprising tenderness, and the recognisable human mess of insecurity and projection. Yet the piece still feels as though it’s circling around its most potent ideas without fully landing them. Private View is solid, confident, and often engaging, but it continues to search for the deeper clarity that its premise promises.
*** Three Stars
Reviewed by Stephanie Osztreicher
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