It doesn't take long for the protagonists of Sarah Ruhl's 2011-set romantic comedy – two actors who have been cast in a 1930s melodrama called The Last Kiss – to realise they've signed up for a theatrical flop in the making. The director is hopeless, all wafting hands and evasive 'just trust your instincts'; the young supporting cast are as wooden as the boards they're tentatively treading; and the bombastic script feels ludicrous to the pair's naturalistically trained ears.
There is also a whopper of an art-imitating-life situation afoot: the pair, elusively named He and She, are portraying but also happen to be first loves, reuniting to crackling chemistry despite She and her character each being married with a grownup daughter.
A Farcical Send-Up
As a farcical send-up of rehearsal room antics and the high-kicking hamminess of 1930s musicals, Blanche McIntyre's production works well enough. There are a steady stream of jokes and satirical nods to the genre (one devastating revelation in The Last Kiss gives way to a tap routine), plus some pleasing physical comedy, particularly from James Phoon as He's green but eager understudy, Kevin.
Art and Life Interplay
But Stage Kiss also has its sights set on the interplay between art and life – specifically whether onstage romance can conjure real feelings – and here it comes unstuck, thanks to some pointed but unsteady metatheatricality. The house lights are up throughout the opening scene, as She auditions (an indication that everything thereafter is a play within a play?), while moments supposedly set in She and He's real world lapse into melodramatic dialogue or erupt into song. But there is no final explanation, no drawing back of a previously unseen curtain that reveals everything in its place.
This perhaps intentional ambiguity torpedoes the play's big question, by creating a space too slippery for the capable leads (Patrick Kennedy as manchild He, and MyAnna Buring as neurotic yet charming She) to build a convincing connection. And She's crucial choice, between the thrill of rekindlement and the steady comfort of her marriage, lacks the emotional power it would have in a more grounded world.
Robert Innes Hopkins' set deals deftly with all the shiftiness, hopping between rehearsal room, stage and He's flat but also, thanks to revolving set pieces, placing us on both sides of the proscenium arch. We are in the audience of The Last Kiss, and suddenly looking out at that very audience.
If only we were allowed to linger in one spot or another a little longer. Stage Kiss is at Hampstead theatre, London, until 13 June.
