A light-hearted yet intimate slice of life
When Marisa finds herself on the end of a bad break-up, she throws herself into the fantasy of a new relationship, or fling, with Dr. Victor Reed, an ex-classmate who happens to show up when Marisa calls for medical help at 3am whilst tearily lying on the floor of her apartment. This is the plot of One Whole Night; a bit frantic at times, but it works in its favour.
Charlie Buckland and Tracey Ann Wood both give solid performances as Victor and Marisa, but it was a shame that their best moments seem to come at different times, meaning there was little electricity from both of them in any one scene. Buckland is at his best in the first act as a detached medical professional who examines Marisa as patient with tachycardia. His chipper attitude, perhaps out of relief he’s the one on the right end of the stethoscope, had shades of Hugh Dennis’ performance as the bank manager in Fleabag. An understated performance which made me want to see more.
It’s in the second act that Wood steals the show, perfectly playing the role of a woman aggressively trying to flirt and recapture her youth to the degree where I couldn’t help but cringe. It’s one of the funniest sequences of the play, and everything down to Marisa’s gold blouse and wet-look leggings tells us she’s a woman who’s picked out her ‘going-out-clothes’ with a desperate purpose. Marisa’s monologues felt perfect for her character – as if she’d lifted them from her acting career in order to tell us about the lakeside hotel views and her melodramatic feelings. Wood’s Marisa comes on so wonderfully strong that it’d be hard for Buckland’s Victor (who has feelings for another woman) to not act awkward. But his movements around the stage and the ‘Dad-dancing’ felt a little over-the-top and made it harder to believe that Marisa and Victor were the same age – to the point where any rejection felt like a comment on an age gap rather than Victor having eyes for someone else.
It’s in the third act when things begin to feel shaky. Despite rejecting Marisa’s lakeside advances after she suddenly turns up, and then ghosting her, Victor still apparently feels emotionally involved enough to go and visit her to tell her he’s moving to the US with his partner. It came across as an excuse to put Victor and Marisa back in the same room for the final scene; Victor is on the phone a fair amount during One Whole Night, surely this could have been another phone call?
Throughout One Whole Night, I found myself distracted by the lack of time and place. It’s set at time where a doctor would do house visits but also where people have smartphones. Not knowing where the hotel is that Victor visits, makes it tough to gauge how desperate Marisa is to see Victor again. Combine this with Victor’s bemused smartphone use and awkward responses to Marisa’s advances making him seem far older than the plot said, One Whole Night never settles.
One Whole Night does however, do a fine job of finding the humour in some bleaker moments, and Buckland and Wood’s performances explore an interesting dynamic which is worth seeing in the intimate setting of The White Bear Theatre – come and be a fly on the wall: https://www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk/whatson/one-whole-night.