If one's memory plays rose-tinted tricks, as DC Jackson's extended non-rom-com suggests, then this speedy revival of a work first seen during the 2010 Edinburgh Festival Fringe appears now to be this most wilfully adolescent writer's coming of age play.
Tom, the hero of Jackson’s yarn, is a feckless and somewhat gormless rake who finds himself thrown together in the Friday night sack with Amy, a just-met colleague from his new office job. Like the responsible adult he isn’t, Tom, still carrying a torch for his first crush, tries to make believe nothing ever happened. But in a world where drunken sex is “smashin’!”, there are two sides to every story, and the play’s stylistic back-flip so we see things from Amy’s point of view shows she has history too.
All of this may have been textually intact last year, but Jemima Levick’s new production for Borderline seems infinitely less madcap and much more equal in its depiction of thirty-something singletons on the verge of finally growing up. The result, as Jackson’s initial barrage of baroque one-liners, internal monologues and inappropriate touching moves onto second base, is a far subtler evocation of the dating and mating game than Jackson’s original template.
As Garry Collins’s Tom and Jessica Tomchak’s Amy share their thoughts with the audience, aided by Katrina Bryan’s hippy chick Sasha, My Romantic History most resembles the sort of soft-centred sex comedy the swinging sixties were flooded with. As Tom and Amy come to terms with the consequences of getting in what used to be known as the family way, such an old-fashioned moral tale is a refreshingly rare experience.
HHHH
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