Review: One Day When We Were Young, Park Theatre - awkward conversations
05/03/2025
One Day When We Were Young at the Park Theatre is a 2011 play by Nick Payne that starts on the eve of a young soldier's deployment during WW2, where he is spending the night with his girlfriend. They promise to wait for each other and build a life together after the war.
Leonard (Barney White) isn't scared of going to war as much as he is about losing Violet (Cassie Bradley) while he is away.
We leave them with bombs falling and jump ahead to two encounters first when they are in their 40s, then later to when they are elderly.
It is quickly apparent that Violet didn't wait. Was it that young love is fleeting, merely a brief infatuation? Did circumstances get in the way? How long was Leonard away?
The problem is that the information about why this youthful love fizzled out is scant. Given the awkwardness between the two on their romantic evening together and subsequent encounters, did they ever really love each other?
When they meet in later life, the conversation is dominated by embarrassed small talk rather than an analysis of their relationship, what went wrong, and where their lives ended up.
In the snippets we do get, Violet seems to have moved on much more easily than Leonard. Any regret? It is difficult to tell in between the chat, which lingers on the banal, adding little of value to the story.
Cassie Bradley and Barney White do their best with the odd, clunky and unrevealing script. It doesn't have any of the cleverness or deftness of Nick Payne's award-winning Constellations.
The dialogue flows best during the second encounter when there is a confrontation of the past, of sorts.
One Day When We Were Young starts with declarations of devotion, but what follows is fumbling and strangely emotionless. It is an interesting premise which doesn't really deliver on its promises.
I'm giving it ⭐️⭐️ and a half stars.
One Day When We Were Young, Park Theatre
Written by Nick Payne
Directed by James Haddrell
Cast: Cassie Bradley and Barney White
Running time: 90 mins, no interval
Booking until 22 March; for more information and to buy tickets visit the Park Theatre website.
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