A beautifully tender, brilliantly acted, play about intertwined lives.
It begins with a bad cup of coffee and asking for the WiFi passcode, then crazy golf, winning five-hundred pounds on a scratchcard together and a weekend trip to the seaside. And somewhere in that, Jess and Robbie fall in love. Lost Atoms is the story of that love and their life together – the best of times and the worst of times. Told with Frantic Assembly’s brilliant inventiveness, this play is a beautifully tender look into a relationship.
The play glides through Jess and Robbie’s story, covering an impressive span of time without ever feeling like it’s rushing. All this takes place on Andrzej Goulding’s set, a wall of shelves that the characters climb all over as drawers magically move in and out. The set holds the play beautifully, morphing into countless locations in a wonderfully imaginative way.
Alongside this, Simisola Majekodunmi’s slick lighting and Carolyn Downing’s effective sound design guide the audience’s imaginations through these locations. The play wisely chooses not to use any recorded voices in the moments where Jess and Robbie are talking to a third person, this makes the play feel, in the best way possible, like a bubble. Majekodunmi has an uncanny ability to light scenes in a way which feels both naturalistic and somehow boldly expressionistic – it makes the play a joy to look at.
The superb costume design by Alice McNicholas brilliantly allows the play to cover lots of moments. McNicholas’ designs do so much to tell us who these two people are in every moment of their lives.
Joe Layton (Robbie) and Hannah Sinclair Robinson (Jess) are transfixing to watch. They find so much depth in the characters that completely sells the relationship. They flip between comedy and much more serious moments in a way that few actors could do so well. We feel in them a sense of deep empathy and compassion for their characters – it is emotionally engaged acting of the highest level. Their physicality is wonderful too, not just for how they climb over the set but also in how we see their characters’ relationships with their own bodies change. They handle how these characters change so well. In both performances we can see which parts of Jess and Robbie are fixed and what are changeable, we see habits that were once lovable turn into something darker. It’s acting of deep nuance but which also feels free and playful.
Scott Graham directs them in a characteristic Frantic Assembly way – the play feels wonderfully embodied without losing sense of the words. Few companies and directors manage to balance having such a clear style without their work feeling like variations on a theme.
Whilst equally adept in the light moments and the more serious, Anna Jordan’s writing sometimes feels like it lingers on an idea too long or relishes its own jokes. It’s a minor fault in a play that is otherwise very enjoyable.
This is a very pure piece of theatre. It has such a human view of the mess of relationships, all the joy and the pain. It’s a tender and moving play well worth seeing.
This show runs at Lyric Hammersmith until 28th February. Tickets here.