Wreckage

Three stars

 Sam and Noel were lovers who thought they would be together forever, before everyday tragedy rips them apart. As Tom Ratcliffe’s play for HarlowPlayhouse makes clear, however, lost love is more than purely a physical thing. Opening on the fateful day when everything changed, Ratcliffe’s play flits between past, present and future, as we see the mutual devotion between the couple, rewinding on how they met before lurching to the pain that follows as ghosts linger while life goes on. 

 

Director Rikki Beadle Blair puts Ratcliffe, who plays Sam, and Michael Walters as Noel through a series of emotional hoops in a narrative whirligig that would be easy to lose control of if not paced as carefully as it is. Ratcliffe and Walters, on stage throughout, are to be admired for their restraint.

 

As a series of photographs projected onto the back wall illustrate key moments,the scenario is familiar from the likes of Truly Madly Deeply and Ghost. Despite its dramatic invention, the play’s structure might itself lend itself more to the screen. The play’s final moments take a leap beyond all that, though, as it fast-forwards its way through a matter of life and death in heart-rending fashion. 

 

Summerhall until 28 August, 12 noon-1pm

The List, August 2022

 

ends