REVIEW: THE BOX by Brian Coyle at White Bear Theatre 23rd July – 3rd August 2024

“A chilling domestic noir” ★★★

In Brian Coyle's one-act two-hander, ‘The Box', Kate (Sarah Lawrie) and Tom (Martin Edwards) are a couple skirting round the edges, circling each other like predator and prey, like so many other couples with history underneath them. But this is a relationship in free fall, an emotional cat-and-mouse through memory, and only a mysterious box is keeping them together.

The production is a chilling domestic noir, in which its namesake quite literally takes centre stage. We find ourselves in a slimline set, someone's home, dominated by a large box, around which, with an almost experimental flourish, Kate and Tom try to role play their way out of some unspoken trauma. It's odd and intriguing, and Jonathan Woolf's direction is deeply atmospheric.

Using the box to leverage their fantasies – an investment banker, a lady who lunches, call me Annabel, call me Kate – they attempt to ignore a past that breaks through in passive aggression, digs, and insinuations. As an audience, it takes a while to really meet these people. We're not entirely sure what's going on, or what this strange item in the middle of the room really is. Is it literal or metaphorical?

It's a good premise, and a neat twist on the kind of memory boxes many of us have, usually filled with happy ones. This large box in the room acts as a proxy for their pain, filled with avoidance and animated by metaphor. It's a great plot device too, a classic MacGuffin that drives the story forward and keeps the audience engaged. Tom and Kate debate what's inside, where it came from, and what they should do with it. They circumnavigate it like an explosive, as we gradually get to know the real couple under the layer of lies and false memories, until we finally discover the truth.

It's a well written piece with a sense of emotional scope, structure, and risk, though, if I'm picky, I wonder if the direction slows it down occasionally, like dampers or brake stops where they don't really need to be, perhaps a touch too flowery and aware of itself, interludes of physicality that don't necessarily add anything new.

Kate's character has real potential, an obviously once life-and-soul woman ravaged by grief, but, like Tom too, she becomes a bit one-note, a bit overwhelmed by intensity. Again, I'd say that's more of a direction point, as Sarah Lawrie's performance itself is magnetic, if a little jittery. Likewise Martin Edwards' Tom, who at times gives such an amazingly naturalistic performance that you feel like you're peeking into their real lives.

All in all, it's not necessarily an original story, but it is certainly inventively and poetically told. It's a tragedy about ambiguity and bad choices, and it shows us with true pathos and humanity that once you let something out of the box, it's impossible to get it back in.

The Box by Brian Coyle

Directed by Jonathan Woolf

White Bear Theatre, 23rd July – 3rd August 2024

Box Office: https://www.whitebeartheatre.co.uk/whatson/the-box

Reviewed by Alix Owen