Make It Beautiful Theatre Company’s Sniff is a two-hander with a degree of distinction on the Brockley Jack Theatre
“Sorry, are you talking to me?”
Though it could not seem to be it, Gabriel Fogarty-Graveson and Felix Grainger’s Sniff begins off as a horror story. The mere notion of anybody putting up a dialog within the gents of a sketchy pub ought to make the blood run chilly and in order Alex bursts into the amenities of such an institution to be met by the garrulous Liam, you simply know that nothing good goes to come back from it.
The cleverness of Sniff is the way it unfolds that flip of occasions as a result of at first, there doesn’t appear to be something connecting this pair. Liam is a neighborhood lad from this depressed city, fighting a number of addictions and diminished horizons; Alex is a suited and booted Canary Wharf type, able to suggest to his girlfriend on this random spot he’s chosen, as soon as he’s negotiated the banter right here that’s.
It’s entertaining banter too, given a pointy edge by the stash that Liam is surprisingly eager to share with Alex. And because the pair bask in a number of the nostril sweet, the depth of their interplay ramps up. Revelations change into extra private, connections draw ever nearer, the circumstances of this apparently random conferences ultimately sliding into focus.
Ben Purkis’ manufacturing possesses sufficient power to maintain this single-room drama well-plumbed, canny lighting design permitting for clearly delineated flashbacks and drawing edgy performances from Fogarty-Graveson and Grainger which hold us on the sting of our seat. Leaning in the direction of naturalism within the set design is the one actual flaw – has there ever been a pub rest room that large!.