Far from the formal experimentation of his earlier Fringe hits ‘Beats’ and ‘Mouthpiece’, Kieran Hurley’s new play is a lightly farcical dark comedy about a school teacher having a very bad day.
Specifically, married Iain (Conleth Hill) is having a bad day because he’s gone to visit a brothel to sleep with a man for the first time. Unfortunately, the whole thing has become complicated by the fact the man in question is running late and Iain is stuck making small talk with the brothel owner, Zara (Dani Heron), who is mortified to recognise him as her ex-teacher.
At its heart, ‘Adults’ is a mature and contemplative comedy about what it is to grow up and accept who you – and other people – are, and to accept that the world is a hard and complicated place. That certainly applies to Iain, the blustering school teacher with a comfortable life now left trying to work out why he’s so unhappy. The same goes for Zara, who was taught by Iain to believe in a better, fairier world than the one she finds herself living in. And then there’s Anders Hayward’s male prostitute Jay, who finally turns up, half-heartedly pretending to Iain that he’s a twinky 22-year-old when actually he’s 30 and has his baby daughter in tow. All three of them need to understand that life necessitates change, and that change can be tumultuous.
The problem is that this is all tied up in a fairly pedestrian comedy drama. The long passages where the trio just have a go at each other in various permutations are amusing enough, but it’s wearyingly improbable Iain would have stayed in the brothel more than about five minutes with the amount Zara is having a go at him. And his apparent determination to stay is not in any way matched by his libido when he’s finally left alone with Jay and sullenly refuses to get involved. Although it feels like there’s a great deal of empathy at the core of Hurley’s writing, the execution of Roxana Silbert’s production gets in the way, with its sitcommy tone and occasional flirtation with Orton-esque farce.
It’s hardly a bad play, but its tender heart and its obvious desire to make the audience laugh are two aspects of ‘Adults’ that never really reconcile with each other. It feels like its never as poignant or as funny as it would like to be, and ends up feeling stranded in the MOR doldrums.