Malika, a teen social media influencer is excited about her appearance and about her relationships. She is very extroverted, always excitedly posting about makeup and hair tips and chatting with her more studious friend Sophia who wants to stay with her books. She had a bad relationship with a boy who won’t let her go, obsessively stalking her and ‘getting into her mind’ which stops her from moving forward.
She is contrasted with Victor, a middle-aged salesman played with appropriate desperation by Charlie Buckland, who is the opposite of social with his shoe collection, his favourite power tools and the dummy of a woman he carries around with him.
In the most original part of this play, Victor talks tenderly to this life-size doll which represents his wife who left him years ago. Â She has the tremendous advantage over his real wife of always agreeing with him.
Victor embodies the miseries of a salesman’s life ‘Getting to know all the service stations’ while Malika, played with baffled cheeriness by Christie Fewry, exudes the vapid brightness of the influencer announcing, ‘Things you never knew about Croydon’.
Both stories tell of the relationship with a partner who is no longer with them, but both of these partners are still alive and make appearances: Malika’s ex-boyfriend and Victor’s ex-wife provide a different commentary on the events which the main characters have lived through.
The outside world impinges when Significant Others borrows from news stories about the felling of an ancient tree and the stabbing of a girl at a bus stop.
Though both characters face disappointments and troublesome relationships with an ex-partner, they don’t have any connection with each other which is an unusual structure for a play (though not unique). However, their tales don’t seem to inform each other either, there is, for example, no casual discovery in one storyline which would make absolute sense of the other if only the different strands could communicate.
Thie five actors (playing nine parts) keep up the momentum of character but the play lacks the dramatic tension needed for real zest.
Playwright: Shireen Shaikh
Cast: Christie Fewry, Charlie Buckland, Leila McCalla, Kate Russell-Smith, Bryan Seisay
Duration: 90 minutes no interval
Until: 29 August 2026