‘Mayfly’ review

Joe White’s ‘Mayfly’ is the first debut play staged under Paul Miller’s artistic directorship of the Orange Tree Theatre. Written during White’s residency with touring company Pentabus Theatre, it had its first rehearsed reading at the Orange Tree last year, while White was part of the theatre’s Writers Collective.

White situates the numbing lockdown of grief against a wider backdrop of loss. Cat leaves her compulsive stream of voicemails to someone who’ll never reply, alone, in the local pub, where she first met Ben, on the day it closes. Rich old people from cities are buying up their tiny Shropshire village and eroding its history.

Director Guy Jones imbues his production with a desperate sense of clinging on – to a football shirt, to the past. Cécile Trémolières’s set is overgrown and leafy, centred on a shallow pit with pot plants, a half-deflated football and plastic pint glasses. It’s a jumble of life condensed into a single place and time. Christopher Nairne’s forlorn lighting picks out a rope swing.

White has a great ear for the sharp and sometimes spiteful edges of grief. As Cat, Niky Wardley’s brittle smile is a wound, while Simon Scardifield’s Ben shoves his pain somewhere unspoken. They’re trapped in their loss together, raking over who they were at the start.  

But the writing is funny, too, as the characters stumblingly reach out to each other. Evelyn Hoskins’s Loops is self-conscious, a prickling bundle of front, as she asks out Harry. She insists the doctor described her as ‘hard as fuck’ as a baby.

Irfan Shamji’s bewildered Harry is both touching and hilarious as he encounters each family member separately before ending up, almost farcically, at dinner with them all.

This is where the play falters, as this coincidence (however small this village might be) tips over into contrivance. The play’s prior separation of the characters into pairs (with Harry as the main constant) also leaves Cat and Loops’ relationship underexplored.

After a meandering mushroom hunt, the final dinner scene is left with a hell of a lot of explaining and emotional heavy-lifting to do. Ultimately, it struggles to achieve this to the same winning level of credibility as the play’s generous exploration of the small, aching moments of grief until this point.