Never Tell Me the Odds arrives at the Old Red Lion Theatre as a small and concentrated piece of new writing, quietly testing the limits of intimacy in a fringe setting. The Red Lion remains one of those rare London rooms where the audience sits close enough to hear breath and hesitation.
Written and produced by Katherine Tempany, the play is set on Christmas Eve in a private London rehabilitation clinic where we meet Maddy, a woman three days sober and visibly fraying at the edges. She has retreated from life after two painful relationships — one with Hugh, a haughty colleague and married man, another with Nate, a soft-hearted friend she wished had been more — and appears determined to sit out her second chance. On this day, however, she is forced to confront the possibility of real living when her ghosts come to visit.Â
Ficklelily Bel Burdis’s portrayal of Maddy rings genuinely human, capturing both the weary ache of addiction and the awkward, tentative steps toward empathy and hope. Her interaction with the co-stars playing love interests are overall strained and feel less choreographed, but supporting characters such as the therapist Paula and fellow resident Ronnie offer warm tonal shifts.
At its best, the production makes you feel the emotional texture of its central questions about connection, loneliness, and survival. The staging is stark. Most of the performance takes place in near darkness, broken only by narrow spotlights that isolate the characters and define their emotional boundaries, designating light as a kind of interrogation. Silence expands between scenes and begins to speak for the protagonist, whose loneliness becomes more legible through absence than exposition. It is an elegant concept, and one of the production’s most successful choices.
The story centres on a woman negotiating the wreckage of old relationships and addictions. She is plagued less by guilt than by a terrifying self-awareness, and the show allows her to inhabit that discomfort without apology. The supporting characters appear as fragments of her former life. Their presence feels fleeting, as if the darkness is constantly threatening to reclaim them.
The performers treat the material seriously. Even with script in hand, their restraint gives the play weight and prevents it from slipping into melodrama. The atmosphere they collectively create would be diminished in a larger house, where distance and acoustics tend to blunt the subtleties that feel essential here. If this work is to grow, it should do so without sacrificing its scale or its intimate mode of address.
If the play has a weakness, it is that it still feels like a draft of something more cohesive. Scenes emerge with emotional force but do not always connect to what surrounds them. Instead of a dramatic arc, the audience receives a sequence of encounters that shimmer briefly and then vanish. This fragmentary quality does not undermine the play entirely, but it does make the final impression somewhat soft. The writing gestures toward revelation yet does not always follow through. The Christmas setting, underscoring the contrast between holiday cheer and loneliness of recovery, can feel a bit tropey as a Hollywood-style statement on the hollowness of the holiday.
At present, Never Tell Me the Odds is not a fully realised work, but it is a compelling early outing. Its aesthetic instincts are strong and its emotional interests sincere. One can imagine a later version with sharper contours, more confident transitions, and a sturdier dramatic spine.
P.S. I must confess that I was waiting for the reveal to the Stars Wars reference that never transpired.
Written and produced by Katherine Tempany
Directed by Abhishek Passi
Cast includes Ficklelily Bel Burdis, Spencer Simmons, Fiona Spreadborough, Jack Maughan, Zak Rosen