Review: After the Tone, Bridewell Theatre

Written for Time Out

Such is the relentless navel gazing of the four lovesick losers pining for her, it's little wonder that Livvi doesn't answer her phone. Their company is such a drag, all one-note whining and lyrical waxing, that if she had any sense at all, Livvi would have long since assumed a fake identity and emigrated.

Maybe she has, given that she never appears. We see her only through the eyes of those she's hurting. Presumably, we're meant to begrudge her manipulative selfishness and arrogant disregard for others. After all, this is a girl that thought a supermarket-standard pot plant consolation enough after her oldest friend's attempted suicide and stood her boyfriend up twice consecutively, causing him to miss his sister's wedding. As for those newly caught by Livvi's magnetism - a student infatuated from afar and an Indian girl desperately trying to engineer chance encounters - we're probably supposed to sympathize.

Only the forlorn four are so jaw-clenchingly insipid, it's impossible not to resent them their woes. Their musical monologues feel like diary entries by unrequited teenage depressives: a problem worsened by the deliberately languid performance mode. Russell Thompson's libretto smacks of post-university fear of the big wide world - tedious to those accustomed to it - and Oliver Fenwick's book flounders. His lyrics feel forced ("She's hot, but single she is not") and rhythmically, it's often counter-intuitive.