What happens when desire is preserved, but intimacy is postponed?
Scottish playwright Douglas Maxwell explores this intriguing question in the world premiere of Inexperience. Law student Robin meets Iris, who is about to drop out of university, at her 21st birthday party in 1995. Instantly attracted to one another, they describe the feeling as a “charge”. To preserve it, they make an extraordinary promise: they will never touch each other—not even fingertips. Decades later, they meet again by chance in a café. Robin has kept the promise alive for thirty years. Iris, however, forgot it the day after the party. It irresistibly raises a question: was the “charge” something they created together, or something Robin alone has been sustaining all this time?
The title “Inexperience” gradually reveals itself to be more ambiguous than it first appears. At first, it seems to refer simply to youth: Robin and Iris don’t have much experience of love, sex or relationships. However, Iris argues that experience naturally produces wisdom, while Robin’s decades of waiting leave him not wiser, but emotionally tethered to a moment that Iris has long since left behind. If anyone remains “inexperienced”, it may be Robin, as he has kept an imagined possibility instead of allowing it to become part of ordinary life.
The play also draws a fascinating distinction between physical desire and emotional intimacy. Robin describes physical touch as something that makes him want to say, “I love you”, not only to a partner, but also to family and friends. Physical touch therefore becomes the language of affection rather than simply erotic attraction. Ironically, neither Robin nor Iris ever say, “I love you”, but their affection is unmistakable in the promise to defer a touch. The absence of physical touch seems to intensify their desire so that the anticipated physical encounter comes to carry emotional meanings that neither of them can fully express.
This also leaves a lingering question. If Iris has forgotten the promise entirely, what exactly has endured across all these years? The play suggests that desire can survive independently of memory, but I found myself wondering whether what persists is less a mutual attraction than Robin’s fidelity to an idea. That uncertainty does not necessarily undermine the play’s premise, but it does complicate it and invites the audience to decide whether relationships are sustained by love, nostalgia, projection, or simply faith in an imagined future.
Jessica Worrall’s stage design mirrors that emotional journey. Four plain benches remain on stage throughout and are constantly rearranged to reflect the changing relationship. In the opening birthday-party scene, the benches resemble a camera viewfinder that frames the young couple as though freezing them in time. When Robin and Iris meet again in middle age, the benches become a zebra crossing, then shift diagonally as Robin’s carefully ordered life begins to tilt after their reunion and their long-awaited touch. By the final scene, the shorter benches retreat almost unnoticed while the longer pair remain joined on the diagonal. They seem to suggest that the promise protecting the “charge” has finally given way to genuine closeness.
The four performers create a seamless continuity between the younger and older Robin and Iris. Both pairs convincingly sustain the same magnetic chemistry, like opposite poles irresistibly drawn together while trying to resist the force between them. Sophie Fortune and Alexander Tait, who also take on multiple supporting roles, switch between characters with impressive versatility. However, the doubling occasionally causes confusion, particularly when Tait appears on stage as Robin’s trainee while simultaneously voicing Iris’s son in a recorded message.
Maxwell wraps big philosophical questions inside this engaging romantic comedy. Should we protect ourselves from life’s inevitable disappointments, or risk everything by embracing them? Inexperience suggests that intimacy is not the end of desire, but its fulfilment. A life untouched may also be a life unloved.
Drama
Written by Douglas Maxwell
Directed by Sally Reid
Cast Includes: Adura Onashile, Sandy Grierson, Sophie Fortune, Alexander Tait.
Until: 14th July 2026
Running Time: 1 hours 55 minutes including a 20-min interval
Photo Credit: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan