Review: 'The One' by Vicky Jones, Soho Theatre

On the face of it, a play about a dysfunctional relationship and the pains of unrequited love appears ripe with a level of angst and melodrama that is less inspiring to a discerning audience.  But this play won the Verity Bargate Award 2013, and is the product of Edinburgh Festival award-winning company DryWrite, so we take a chance.

And oh, how thankful we are for doing so.  What this play adds to an otherwise pedestrian, formulaic love triangle, is a biting, bracing degree of honesty with dialogue that strikes each character with the same force as a slap across the face, working in parallel with a disturbing exploration of consensual domestic abuse.  The slap ricochets straight into the heart of every audience member, leaving us as shell-shocked, confused and hurt as any character portrayed on stage.

From an outsider's perspective, Harry and Jo's relationship is not normal, not healthy, and entirely self-sabotaging.  But somewhere within the dark comedy of their exchanges it is impossible to imagine either one of them functioning with anyone else, despite Kerry's clear belief that she is a better match for Harry.  It is through her character, poetically played by Lu Corfield, that we begin to ask where the line is between rape and consent.  It is a strange, chilling perspective on human impulses that is all dealt with in a world of such brutal honesty that even after a barrage of insults thrown from Jo to Harry, we laugh, because it appears to make sense in this strange world that Steve Marmion's subtle direction has deftly lead us into.

As co-artistic director of DryWrite with Vicky Jones, Phoebe Waller-Bridge plays the weight, depth and charm of Jo's character to heartbreaking effect.  The cold exterior of someone who keeps people at a distance is balanced perfectly with a screaming need to keep them close at bay, both in the writing and in Waller-Bridge's mesmerising performance.  Lu Corfield embodies disaster and distress with pitying force, while Rufus Wright's Harry is as unlikeable as he is loveable.  Such is the bold realisation of each character that we frantically seek to take sides with either one of the victims in this strange trio, and consistently fail, gender politics and moral obligations utterly cast aside.

The real beauty of this play is in the slyly voyeuristic nature of it: the polite eye looks elsewhere while Jo and Harry have sex on their sofa, but returns to laugh as soon as she starts munching on a packet of Wotsits and flicking through TV channels.  We are constantly dragged between a safe place laughing at Harry's karaoke version of 'The Phantom of the Opera' to witnessing unrelenting monologues of the words people do not ordinarily dare to say to each other.  We don't want to look, but feel we need to, totally addicted to the discomfort it causes us.  It pours forth unrestrained no matter how much you beg it not to, helpless while Harry and Jo each pour a bottle of wine over the side of the stage.

Profoundly affecting.  Deeply unsettling.  A worthy winner of the Verity Bargate Award?  Undoubtedly.

• Thu 20 Feb - Sun 30 Mar, 7.30pm. Thu & Sat matinees, 3pm.
• Soho Theatre
• Previews £15 (£12.50), Thu 27 Feb - Sun 2 Mar £17.50 (£15), Tue 4 - Sun 30 Mar £20 (£17.50)
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• http://www.sohotheatre.com/whats-on/the-one/