Written by Liam Scanlon and directed by Dom Stephens, Attachment Theory sets out an intriguing premise: a new couple unknowingly share the same therapist, their relationship unfolding through parallel sessions that blur truth, memory, and manipulation. Produced by Act on Tap, the play brings together Dan Holland, Marley Brown and Bernice Togher in an intimate staging that promises psychological depth but struggles to deliver it.
Much of Attachment Theory takes place in the therapist’s office, with Edward (Marley Brown) and Ryan (Dan Holland) recounting their relationship rather than fully inhabiting it. Seated side by side on a small bench, they narrate encounters, conflicts and desires largely directed towards the therapist (Bernice Togher), who remains a mostly passive presence for a significant portion of the play. This framing device, story as retelling rather than lived interaction, quickly becomes structurally limiting. The emotional stakes are mediated through explanation, not experience.
There are glimpses of what the production could be. Both performers demonstrate control and commitment, particularly in moments where physical proximity hints at intimacy or volatility. Yet these moments are repeatedly interrupted or undercut, preventing any sustained build of tension. Instead of deepening, the relationship circles itself, returning to familiar patterns of defensiveness, accusation and self-justification.
The play gestures towards themes of trauma, addiction and relational instability, but rarely allows these to land with clarity. What emerges instead is a form of emotional deflection, language that describes pain without quite accessing it. The result is curiously flat. Where theatre can sometimes offer a kind of release, where feeling and thought align, Attachment Theory remains caught in abstraction. The characters speak, but do not seem to arrive anywhere.
This is most evident in the final twist, which reframes the therapist’s role and culminates in a sudden physical reunion between the two men. Rather than illuminating what has come before, the ending feels reductive, collapsing complexity into a familiar loop of attraction and dysfunction. If the play asks who is telling the truth, it never quite confronts a deeper question: what it means to face one’s own suffering without retreat.
There is, perhaps, an unintended insight here. Relationships shift, narratives fracture, and identities prove unstable, but without a willingness to sit with discomfort, these cycles simply repeat. Attachment Theory observes this instability, yet stops short of transforming it into something theatrically or emotionally resonant.
In its current form, Attachment Theory remains an interesting idea constrained by its own structure, more analytical than affective, and ultimately less revealing than it intends to be.
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