Review: Can’t Wait To Leave, Waterloo East Theatre

Review: Can’t Wait To Leave, Waterloo East Theatre

I’ve moved to London 3 times in my life. I suppose it’s protected to say that I’m fairly settled now however I bear in mind transferring right here once I was 20, not realizing anybody, discovering a random flat and navigating my means for the primary time. For some time it was a tough place to stay, to search out my ft and make buddies. So, when Ryan (Zach Hawkins) tells us of transferring to London and with an undercurrent of feeling and being alone all through, properly all of it sounded very acquainted.

We first meet Ryan in a medical ready room. He has moved to London following his older brother. He doesn’t know anybody else, has taken a gig financial system supply job and resides in a not-very-nice flatshare means out in Hounslow. After Ryan’s brother declares he’s leaving London, it leaves him feeling much more alone and unsupported. He takes up a relationship, of types with Richard, a a lot older man who he met by his brother. But the age, energy and cash disparity between them, to not point out the older males’s disdain for Ryan’s bisexuality, by no means units this as a wholesome relationship.

Hawkins engages the viewers from the off, rigorously however casually trying throughout the viewers, speaking to everybody as an entire but additionally as if to everybody individually and instantly. It is an efficient means of drawing us all in. Hawkins is sort of charming which, together with Stephen Leach’s script, lets us sustain with Ryan even when he steadily doesn’t come throughout as a really good man. We hear Hawkins’ largely wonderful impressions of different characters, like a very humorous model of his influencer sister-in-law however (okay, I could also be biased) a really atrocious Northern Irish accent grates badly.

The story makes use of flashbacks to let Ryan inform his story, with every level rigorously exhibiting us simply how alone Ryan feels. He is a younger man, alone in a metropolis, with out assist, believing his future holds nothing good and seemingly trapped in a spiral of loneliness. His hopes for a greater life within the large metropolis, alongside his brother, slip additional and additional away. The script’s nuance factors to the melancholy that Ryan sinks additional and additional into. When his relationship with Richard turns into bodily and sexually abusive Ryan has nowhere to show, and his story may simply finish in a darker place with him unable or unwilling to hunt assist.

Aside from Hawkin’s efficiency, guided by Leach’s course, efficient mild and sound (Gareth McLeod) helps in setting its temper. But working a full half-hour longer than the listed run-time, Can’t Wait To Leave does begin to really feel it. Not that you may inform from Hawkins, who offers a formidable efficiency. But 90 minutes is a very long time for a monologue. Early sections verge on being a stand-up efficiency and others (the festive household gathering particularly) may do with one other look to think about whether or not they add something to the story. While there’s a enormous quantity to love within the script, a considered edit can be welcomed and alleviate the drop-off within the final 20 minutes; there’s a noticeable disengagement inside components of the viewers.

Maybe helped by the truth that I’ve lived a few of this expertise, for the complete time I felt Ryan’s loneliness and isolation deep inside. I bear in mind feeling a lot of that once I ended up in London a lifetime in the past. I hope Ryan’s life seems okay for him in the long run.

Written and directed by Stephen Leach

Can’t Wait To Leave performs at Waterloo East Theatre till 26 February. Further data and tickets will be discovered right here.