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The Poetry Club at SWG3, Glasgow

Four stars

 

A giant inflatable heart leftover from Valentine’s hangs down in the Poetry Club bar prior to the performance of Kathryn Mincer’s bite size new play in the main room next door. While the audience are encouraged to write down what they wish they had asked their ex, it is perhaps worth considering that the trouble with inflatable hearts is they either burst or else slowly deflate and lie limp. 

 

One or the other appears to be what has happened to Alexa and Thomas, the not so happy couple driving each other crazy in Mincer’s play, brought to life in Dominique Mabille’s production by a young international company with their sights clearly set on something bigger. 

 

Alexa and Thomas aren’t crazy the way they were on their first date, nor when one of them told the other they loved them for the first time, and the other one loved them right back. After just shy of seven years together, alas, it might just have something to do with more grown up things that made everything change.

 

As it is, Alexa and Thomas are stuck in traffic on their way to couples therapy when all these magic and not so magic moments make their Proustian return. Whether they stay stuck or not depends on how long they want to travel together before one of them takes a possible wrong turning. 

 

 Mincer’s script puts Alex in the driving seat while Thomas scrolls away on his phone in a frosty scenario that suggests the honeymoon is most definitely over. What unfurls over the next forty minutes is a painfully accurate study of first world domestic disharmony that draws together some of the little things that make up the various markers of a relationship that may or may not be for life. 

 

Based on a text by Mincer’s co-producer Annika Foster, who plays Alexa, this is crafted into a brief but knowingly intimate affair that resembles something from some feelgood TV anthology series’ on modern love. 

 

With Foster playing opposite Gunnar Bjercke as Thomas in Dominique Mabille’s pocket sized production, there is some seriously impressive acting and writing here that makes it a great showcase for all involved. With plans for an Edinburgh Festival Fringe run afoot, let’s hope such a great date show doesn’t get lost in the melee. As for Alexa and Thomas - spoiler alert - they appear to finally get to where they want to go. Of course, as rush hour reality bites, it’ll never last.


The Herald, February 28th 2026

 

Ends 

 

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