[title]
Your thirties can be as lonely and confusing as any of the decades that precede them, I can confirm. In David Eldridge’s transferring National Theatre hit ‘Beginning’, a pair of singletons hovering around the 40 mark have a long, funny, awkward chat while deciding whether to hook up at the end of a house party. And much bittersweet beauty blooms from it in Polly Findlay’s warm, sympathetic production. It is a sort of older, British answer to ‘Before Sunrise’. With more Bros.
I’m going to be absolutely honest: I found it a splash unlikely that Sam Troughton’s somewhat hapless divorcee Danny would be as resistant as he is to the overtures of Justine Mitchell’s sleek Laura when it’s rapidly established that 1) they are the only people left in her Crouch End flat, 2) they fancy each other, 3) they are pissed, and 4) she is basically ordering him to snog her. Conceivably this says more about me than the play. But it is nice – from a bloke perspective at least – to see a work of art vaguely optimistic about the possibility of male decency. Plus if the play just started with them banging, it would be a fairly different show.
Aaaaanywaaay. Successful singleton Laura and blithe Essex lad Danny are undoubtedly ‘types’, but part of the magic of ‘Beginning’ is that they’re not types you’d place together, yet here they are. Attraction, embarrassment, serendipity and proximity force them to share their souls with each other. The sharing is fragile and awkward, and Danny repeatedly offers to leave. But somehow, half-cut and befuddled in the middle of the night, they find something together. More than that: they discover that their all-consuming loneliness might not just be an affliction; it could become a passion that can bring them together.
Eldridge’s script walks an exceptionally well-judged line between poignancy and comedy, thanks in large part to great turns from his leads. Mitchell’s lairy Laura gets the lion’s share of laughs, but Troughton’s late-in-the-show dad dance to Bros’s ‘I Owe You Nothing’ is borderline virtuosic (huge respect to movement director Naomi Said for coaching him so excruciatingly well).
Although the pair do make one, possibly life-altering shared decision, we are always aware of the potential fleetingness of all this. It is quite probable that their lives will diverge the next day. But for the duration of the play you can believe a new beginning is possible – for Laura and Danny, for any of us.