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These days, Hampstead Theatre’s Downstairs space is mostly an incubator for new talent, with a programme of fresh faces. But ‘Paradise’ is an exception, being the first play at the theatre since 1983 for Dusty Hughes, veteran playwright and (extremely) former Time Out Theatre editor.
Roddy Meakin (Geoffrey Freshwater) and Amanda Goose (Sara Kestelman) are a pair of lifelong friends who’ve ended up at the same hyper-fancy retirement home, for initially obscure reasons. Boozy and foul-mouthed, they do not get on with the various lords, ladies and lieutenants who make up the bulk of their peers.
But as the two veteran actors beautifully convey, the pair’s relationship is ambivalent and often painful; each hides things from the other. For the superficially louche Meakin, it’s his sense of rejection. For Goose, it’s her diminishing funds and loosening grip on reality. Kestelman gives a terrific performance as somebody who isn’t gently fading out, but locked in a titanic struggle with herself – sometimes dazed and confused but still holding herself together through sheer force of will. I sometimes wonder how much fun it can be for older actors to play physically and mentally infirm roles, but there’s something exhilarating about Kestelman’s Goose, like seeing a weary athlete digging deep to cross the finish line.
In a crisp, naturalistic production from rising star director Alice Hamilton, they’re joined by a couple of younger actors. Claire Lams has a slightly thankless task playing Kim, the apparently ruthless new care home manager (though there’s more to her than meets the eye). And Rebekah Hinds is great as Sam, a friendly young nurse whose own eccentric perception of reality serves as a smart counterpoint to Goose’s.
Hughes’s hitherto subtle play ends with a cacophony of skeletons thudding out of closets – Hamilton and her cast handle this as delicately as possible but I’m not sure ‘Paradise’ really needed a slew of MASSIVE REVELATIONS to wind itself up. Still, a bit of bombast doesn’t detract from a smart, sensitive play about the romance in raging against the dying of the light.