A 2023 sell-out hit in London and the Edinburgh Fringe, Miriam Battye’s, Strategic Love Play, which mercilessly savages the minefield that is online dating returns to the Soho Theatre for 2024.
Produced by Paines Plough, Soho Theatre and Belgrade Theatre, in association with Landmark Theatres, Strategic Love Play sees two flawed strangers who have both swiped right on a romance app, desperately grappling for connection as they meet for the first time.
Set in a pub, this 70 minute two-hander is very apropos for modern times. It’s all very awkward. Woman (Letty Thomas) is obnoxious, needy and confrontational, Man (Archie Backhouse), is a little shy and dull, but basically a decent ordinary bloke.
Early on, after a particularly uncalled for outburst from Woman, Man starts to walk out on the date, but then he doesn’t. Is it because he is simply too nice for his own good, or could it be Woman’s unorthodox ‘love strategy’ that’s making him stay?
The complexities of online dating has been covered many times on stage, but Miriam Battye’s acerbic dialogue takes male-female banter to another level. It’s push and pull, and cleverly captures the power dynamics of dating. Battye’s protagonists are layered, and the actors have plenty of dimensions to work with. The script brings alive the capriciousness of the couple’s meeting. As an audience we are never entirely sure which path it will take, and it makes us want to root for them more.
Letty Thomas and Archie Backhouse have great chemistry together on stage, and as they spar they bounce off each other with meticulous comic timing.
Thomas gives a formidable performance as the abstruse and paradoxical Woman whose relentless gripes include: “the only men who want me are old and live in Greece.” Her character is not particularly likeable, she is utterly self-absorbed, a bully, and seems more than happy to throw emotional hand grenades at her date without giving a dam about the consequences on him.
Then just as your tolerance of her has reached its ear bending limits, she is lying on the floor under the table in an almost foetal position, broken, fragile like a wounded animal. It’s heart wrenching and is the best moment of the play. We realise that the Woman is collateral damage of the dating game, and this may partly give a clue to why she is on a self-destructive journey and willing to drag others along with her as hostages.
Archie Backhouse is brilliant as the Man who can’t stop saying sorry. He is reserved, vulnerable and immediately likeable. However once out of his shell he is not afraid to say what he thinks, and after implying the Woman has mental health issues (“Are you OK?”), he later calls her a : “narcissist who is not hot.” Backhouse’s performance is very grounded, and his comic delivery is masterful.
Katie Posner’s precise direction deftly charts the emotional oscillations in Strategic Love Play between the two desperate strangers who just this once want to be chosen a match
Strategic Love Play is at Soho Theatre until 15th June 2024
