A Man and a Woman meet. There’s def­in­itely some­thing between them that both would like to explore fur­ther… but his girl­friend shows up. They run into each oth­er again. But she’s try­ing to make it work with someone and he’s got a dif­fer­ent girl­friend. Through com­edy and tragedy they keep meet­ing each oth­er. Will they ever be able to work some­thing out?

Lyn­dee-Jane Ruther­ford dir­ects a charm­ing cast who make the most of Pip Hall’s clev­er and funny script. Ren­ee Lyons is the star of the show as (the unnamed) Woman. There’s a whiff of Man­ic Pix­ie Dream Girl about her as she plays a range of emo­tions through­out the show man­aging to con­vince us each one is authen­t­ic. She is bril­liantly com­ic in one par­tic­u­lar scene. Richard Dey is (the unnamed) Man. He plays his char­ac­ter as smugly self-con­tained until one scene where he is able to let his emo­tions loose.  It is a nice con­trast and beau­ti­fully affect­ing. They are superbly sup­por­ted by Amy Ush­er­wood and Jack Buchanan who play all the oth­er char­ac­ters.

AV Design by Jonath­an Har­ris provide some laughs as the act­ors trans­ition Ian Harman’s set from one scene to anoth­er. Harman’s cos­tumes are excel­lent at high­light­ing char­ac­ter while provid­ing dis­tinct­ive looks for each scene. Light­ing design by Mar­cus McShane and sound design Ruther­ford and Deb McGuire round out the excel­lent pro­duc­tion val­ues.

Truly delight­ful.

  • Ache by Pip Hall, dir­ec­ted by Lyn­dee-Jane Ruther­ford on at Circa Theatre to 21 Novem­ber 2015