A young couple in T-shirts and jogging bottoms leap onto an empty set, firing into their exercise routine of leg bends and stomach crunches. After a few minutes, we soon feel like we are going to be treated to a comic stand-up as Dom grabs a microphone, breaking the fourth wall, telling the audience how he is going to help us find love. Game On.
As he mansplains how to play hard to get, it feels rather misogynist somehow, and I am not sure I am going to enjoy this, but wait. He rewinds us to their first date played out with them both singing karaoke to Loveshack and YMCA and making demented dance moves to techno beat and other old favourites. As a spectator, it feels rather old hat, and goes on too long, them trying to make us laugh. Later, seeing who can each eat the hottest curry, she finishes first but is sick. ‘Do I win?’, he asks. We realise it is all about the competition between them.
The performance of both Hayley Calleia and Sam Law is energetic and full on. Dom has a plan, gleaned from self-help books, about ‘how to find and keep love.’ Izzy is ‘loved up just right’, but still wants to keep to the dating rulebook. ‘Game on’ is Dom’s term for sex, ‘not an heiress but could be hairless’ his idea of a joke.
We see them again after they have moved in together and the relationship has gone stale. They have decided to have an open relationship and date other people. ‘We’re so modern’, Izzy says. ‘The best part is I always come back to you’…you can see misogyny creeping in. But all is not what it seems.
The play picks up as the couple begin to understand the forces they are gambling with. Both are frightened of dropping their defences, still playing the ‘game’. They can’t do without rules, but are obviously playing by the ones not good for them. Their dramas are played to an accompaniment of pop music which puts their often tawdry remarks about each other into another sphere.
The script is dextrous and modern. Though it is explained as an ‘anti-rom com’, it doesn’t give us much light. Honesty does not seem to be a part of the plan for real life love, but feeling perpetually scared is. It is however something that is recognisable, and makes us realise that a leap of faith is what we all need.
Writer: R.K. Chui
Cast: Hayley Calleia, Sam Law
Director: Aoife Scott
Duration: 65 mins
Until: 7th June 2025