Miriam Battye’s slick two-hander slices through the meet-cute with a wicked grin

There is subtle cunning in Strategic Love Play, not least in its title. This is no by-the-numbers meet-cute – instead, writer Miriam Battye gives us a Play in every sense, and a razor-sharp meditation on the fuzzy gender politics of modern dating.

Battye, taking time out from writing for the Royal Court and Succession (!), brings SLP to the Soho Theatre after stints at the Belgrade Theatre and Edinburgh Fringe, directed by Katie Posner. It’s a tight 80-minuter but make no mistake, it poses questions that linger long after the bows (and will no doubt cause awkward Tube rides for those misguided enough to think it appropriate for a first date).

It has become a slightly unfortunate trope that every love-based two-hander must have characters named Man and Woman but Battye utilises it to its fullest extent, as Man and Woman become Men and Women. Our couplet ‘date’ for barely five minutes before the façade of romantic interest dissipates and the characters become each other’s therapist, interrogator and, above all, surrogate barrister for their gender. The woman demands honesty (‘Why don’t you just say it. Say the thing. Not the thing in front of the thing’). The man questions why his good intentions are always under scrutiny (I don’t think I’ve been a dickhead. I think I’ve been a nice, normal person). Battye’s dialogue hovers between deceptively simple and devilishly wry, but always crisp in its truth of observation.

The performances are excellent, the kind of excellent that immediately puts an audience member at ease. Archie Backhouse has beautiful detail as the well-intentioned gent, dogged in his attempts to remain easy-going and ‘nice’ – his efforts to understand the so-called ‘sociopath’ before him provide much of the play’s plentiful humour. Letty Thomas (of Bridgerton fame) is an endlessly watchable whirlwind. She balances bluntness and allure, fury and vulnerability like a pro. 

What this play does so beautifully is articulate how social media has – to be quite frank – FUCKING RUINED our generation’s ability to deal with love. We can all talk about it, we can categorise the undesirable into neat boxes, we can wax lyrical on the step-by-step process of each relationship’s rise and fall. But the moment someone flawed but utterly desirable bursts through our well-constructed spider’s web of ‘this is what I want’, many of us seize up, self-sabotage, catastrophise or run a very long way away. 

I have no answer for this. Neither does the play. I’m starting to think that might the point of this theatre thing.