Stiff & Kitsch’s Supernova is an achingly truthful take a look at how difficult relationships will be at VAULT Festival
“Do you have a favourite planet?”
Brian* and Tess meet at a flowery costume occasion. He tries to impress her with Doctor Who data (he can identify the actors each chronologically and alphabetically); she calls him out for lacking John Hurt’s War Doctor; and fairly quickly she’s cancelled her Uber they usually do it, twice. A shared love of sci-fi and house turns this meet-cute right into a candy relationship however like so many sci-fi exhibits, their time is restricted because the challenges of life disrupt the gravitational subject of this couple.
That’ll in all probability be the final space-based reference (that isn’t a pun, at the very least) as science was by no means my forte. But Rhiannon Neads’ Supernova folds in a light-touch stage of stellar data to attract the parallels between the competing forces on the coronary heart of a star and the dancing, duelling natures of two distinct personalities making an attempt to make it work collectively. It’s a extremely moderately beautiful play, capturing that bittersweet tone that’s the hallmark of many an incredible British rom-com (even when Brian and Tess say they hate them).
Neads buildings the play by way of a collection of quick scenes, pleasant snapshots of the burgeoning connection right here. Chats about what they’d do if an asteroid was about to hit the planet, opinions on assertion partitions, toasted teacakes, some wonderful fancy costume work, there’s a contact of real magic generated by Neads and Sam Swann by way of these vignettes. And additionally, because the temper darkens, because the shadow of despair falls over their family, a brutal honesty that rings awfully true.
Jessica Dromgoole’s manufacturing is most pleasingly realised. A round enjoying house is surrounded with all of the props wanted to inform the story, facilitating the fast modifications between scenes but in addition sustaining the emotional depth that builds all through. There’s some hard-hitting stuff in right here, significantly round what we do to these we love, or don’t love in some circumstances, the knock-on results of despair on these near the sufferer virtually as tough to look at because the self-loathing.
The line about stars being “beautiful on the outside but inside, it’s a fucking mess” nonetheless rings by way of my head this morning, simply as a lot as Tess’ incapability to take a praise, Neads and Swann each achieve this properly at exhibiting how a pair will be so appropriate in some methods, while virtually diametrically opposed in others. Though on the danger of sounding trite, I don’t consider there’s any drawback that Swann shaking his ass in your face wouldn’t resolve. An achingly truthful take a look at how difficult relationships will be.