Review: (THIS IS NOT A) HAPPY ROOM, Theatre Royal Windsor

Photo credit: Mark Senior

Besties, at a time when producers are worried about launching new plays in regional theatres, we are always pleased to see an original work and were delighted to visit the Theatre Royal Windsor where they continue to programme creatively for their stage. This continues the legacy of Bill Kenwright who was a prolific producer and gave us the wonderful Blood Brothers about the impact on siblings separated at birth.

(This is not a) Happy Room has transferred from the intimate King’s Head Theatre in North London with its author Rosie Day playing Elle, one of three siblings who gather for their father’s third marriage. New plays need time to develop, and it is perhaps too early in its development to judge it as a final product and on the press night at Windsor, there was a curious imbalance between the first half, a dark comedy, and second half, which has some emotional heart and interesting reveals.

The writer’s note in the programme contains a rather obvious spoiler when she writes “people get killed on the way to their weddings” so we already know why the father, Eric and his bride to be, Doreen, are not in the cast list and why the family are waiting for their delayed arrival. The first act introduces us to the dysfunctional family who converse in insincere, uncaring and detached vignettes with dark humour. It’s hard to care about any of them and too many scenes seem contrived and unconvincing like a wedding rehearsal without the bride and groom, a game of truth or dare, or a burst of the dance routine to ‘Agadoo’.

However, it sets up a stronger second half with the introduction of Hayley (played by Jazz Jenkins), a psychoanalyst, who helps them open up and explain their fractured relationships and we start to understand how they blame everything on their parents who “messed up the children” and starts to explain the awkward interactions we have seen in the first.

Declan Baxter plays Simon (35), the hypochondriac brother who uses a stick for no obvious reason. Andrea Vallis is the older sister Laura, a cold bossy human rights lawyer married to the henpecked Charles, played by Tom Kanji. Rosie Day is the younger sister Elle who has suffered with nine years of eating disorders and declares shockingly that she “once went to a club sober”. To complicate matters, their mother, Esther, played by Amanda Abbington, has turned up uninvited to her ex-husband’s third marriage ceremony with senile Aunt Agatha, Alison Liney in her professional debut. Agatha has an air of Miss Tibbs from Fawlty Towers as she wonders in and out of scenes and her purpose in the writing is unclear.

Georgia de Grey’s set design has a curious low ceiling which requires half of the theatre’s proscenium arch to be blacked out and creates a letterbox look which means upstage actors, without personal mics, deliver muffled lines that undermine the jokes. The room looks bare, with just a handful of chairs, the walls covered in drapes illuminated by disco lighting. Presumably it was designed for the King’s Head and sits uncomfortably on the Windsor stage.

This play does not yet have the emotional heart of Blood Brothers, despite the abandoned childhood of the siblings or the sharpness of the comedy writing and characterisations in Fawlty Towers with its setting in a Blackpool hotel. Yet the exploration of the causes of the familial tensions, the damage caused to the three siblings by the parents’ marriage break up and the sense of estrangement they felt has potential. With a tighter, funnier first half ending with the reveal of the father’s death as a dramatic shock leading to a thought provoking engaging second half, it could have the emotional impact of Blood Brothers. With further development, this is a play that could create a ‘Happy Room’ in the auditorium’s it plays in. We should encourage and support new writing that explores these themes with a modern outlook so Besties, give it a try for something a little bit different that will make you reflect on your own family relationships.

*** Three stars

Reviewed by: Nick Wayne

(This is not a) Happy Room plays at Theatre Royal Windsor until 17 May, with further info here.