Review: Porphyria, Zoo southside (Venue 82)

IT’S very clever and very polished, this darkly comic three-hander from the University of Nottingham’s New Theatre company, but it only succeeds in engaging the head, never the heart.***

When we first meet journalist Reginald Blake and his barrister wife Hilary, they’re arguing over a game of Scrabble. This somewhat incidental opening should be an opportunity for the audience to invest a bit of emotional capital in the characters, upping the ante for what happens next, but for some reason Nick Jeffrey and Liz Stevens act out the scene in a strangely detached style, coming across more as archetypes than people: the downtrodden dreamer and the shrewish wife.

As the play progresses there’s plenty of wit and spark to the couple’s continual verbal jousting, but never much sense of two human beings suffering underneath. As a result, when the fantasy woman Reg dreams about every night (Genevieve Cunnell) is suddenly made flesh as the family’s new au pair, the shattering effects don’t feel quite as shattering as they should.

The script for this 50-minute production is an edited version of a longer play by CJ Wilmann. Perhaps with the deleted scenes reinstated, and with a little more rawness and intensity to the performances, Porphyria could feel as full-blooded as the Robert Browning poem that inspired it.

ROGER COX

Until 20 August. Today 3:15pm.