STREATHAM SPACE PROJECT

A viscerally exuberant, if sometimes undisciplined, examination of a couple’s relationship from heady start to forlorn implosion, this new work by playwright Chantelle Alle provides burning spirit and robust vitality in spades. In the pairing of performers Elise Palmer and Kofi De-Graft-Jordan, the production is blessed with an incendiary chemistry. The couple is electric-the audience can practically smell the hormonal surge and spark. It emanates almost physically from the stage.

Dreamy April (Palmer), nose in book, attention focused on the fantastical escapades of Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses series, is interrupted by a clearly interested and eager Francis (Jordan), who has noticed her from afar and smoothly moves in to converse with her. “Do you know what day it is?” is his introductory query. Any fear and awkwardness is painted over with a performed bravado and swagger. Underneath the player facade, Jordan skilfully teases out the shivers of excitement and elation Francis experiences at April’s positive reaction to his approach.

As the scenes progress (in short, sharp impressions), defences relax and trust ripens, the couple sweetly opening to one another. The device to have the actors continue dialogue throughout scene transitions, though not audibly clear to the audience, keeps the sense of a solid link growing between and sustaining the characters. Something true has burgeoned and it is carrying through.

Highly passionate in this first half, there is the tendency to elongate certain jubilant passages. In particular, a protracted party karaoke sequence, although fantastic fun (the audience was encouraged to participate, an offer they accepted with prodigious enthusiasm), goes long past serving the needs of the play. It doesn’t stop the story dead so much as momentarily halts the narrative for a blast of hip-hop joie de vivre, a music concert interlude. Palmer and Jordan deliver the goods despite this with absolute vigour and force, their conviction selling the moment. The sense is that Alle is so ardent about her characters she wants them to ride the breadth of all that first flush of love offers, to inebriate them-she wants to wring every last wash of juice out of the situation. She steadies the material again after this idyll with a quiet, late-night exchange between April & Francis that brings them to the next perilous stage of their developing relationship, already with disquieting fissures that hint at future misconceptions and fatal misunderstandings, of things hidden. It will be the things left unsaid or withheld that will signal jeopardy.

This next section perhaps contains spoilers:

When the eventual disenchantment arrives and animation is extinguished, the mood turns glum and dazed. Wariness and defensiveness replace elation and accessibility. April and Francis drift apart, helpless to course-correct. The sting of this faltering alliance is felt strongly, as Palmer and Jordan have so endeared themselves. The audience have been immediate in response all evening, closely aligned to every flutter and quiver of joy, anticipation and apprehension-shock is registered vocally as the couple now find themselves in decline, as dialogue twists to the cruel and destructive. At this performance, there was an immediate interplay between cast and spectator, all fourth-walls razed.

Whereas the ascendant section of the script had lots of space to breathe and evolve, Alle seems to rush a bit through the descent. A conclusive argument, in which the characters air all grievances in one breathless rush of recrimination, is the only moment where the writing feels pushed. A few more scenes building up to this final showdown, as a prelude, are needed, so that this doesn’t have to carry all the freighted baggage. The dialogue suddenly subsumes character and performer-it is as if Alle wants to thrust every message and theme through at once. Palmer and Jordan do what they can (and do it well) to not become mere mouthpieces and shape the speech to individual voice.

Balance is beautifully restored in a final sequence, an elegant and bittersweet encounter years later. Palmer sings a quiet, emotionally shattering rendition of “Moon River” ( the sad, melancholic drift of the song’s narrator and love interest has never been more exquisitely interpreted ). She receives a visitor backstage, a mirror of a fundamental moment from the past, only now both persons are broken and regretful (and wiser?). Palmer, especially, suggests the years elapsed in body language and gesture. Fate is left suspended.

Throughout, Monterey J’s sound design and choice of music acts as fellow character, participant and collaborator, a confidante of the couple, driving narrative, discharging energy, consoling when needed. Director/movement coordinator xanthus keeps the work moving evenly, confidently through the occasional indulgences, bringing focus continually back to the fragile couple at its heart.

When it Snows in April is promising, exhilarating, and gripping.

{🎟 AD: PR Invite – Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review}