REVIEW: THE VALUE OF NAMES at White Bear Theatre 11 February – 1 March 2025

‘A truly intelligent and tense core’ ★★★

Jeffrey Sweet’s play opens with a frank debate over its titular subject, as father and daughter Benny (Jeremy Kareken) and Norma (Katherine Lyle) argue over the latter’s intention to have her surname changed from her father’s to her mother’s, a touchy subject for the long-divorced Benny. 

Norma, trying to strike out on a career as an actress, wants to unburden herself of her father’s legendary surname after his own successful career, but it’s not a name without tarnish as the arrival of Norma’s next director Leo (Tim Hardy) makes clear. Leo and Benny go way back it turns out, and Benny’s name was one that Leo offered up to the authorities during the McCarthy era, blacklisting Benny from show business and ending their friendship.

Names are a strong theme then, giving the show a truly intelligent and tense core that brings to life weighty topics of loyalty and idealism. It’s rare to see a play this clever and with this much intellectual depth, and for that Sweet is to be commended. The script is often witty and funny too, rounding out Leo and Benny as cynical and idealistic in equal measure yet along very different lines.

Unfortunately the script is also flawed, stretching what feels like a snappy 60 minutes into a diluted and overdrawn 90 that often lacks energy as Leo and Benny simply sit around and talk, offering up very little past the halfway point of their discussion that injects proceedings with pace or energy.

Similarly, the performances hit some bumps in the road. While Hardy plays Leo with engaging gravity and nuance, Kareken is a bit one note in his delivery and could feel he lacked other dramatic gears to shift into, stuck in a sarcastic neuroticism throughout and his delivery of lines often suffering as a result.

Lyle for her part gives a strong performance, but again frustrations with the script rear their head; despite feeling longer than it should as a whole, the play gives little if any room for Norma as a character and only allows her be a support to the other two, if at all, thanks to her absence from the entirety of the play’s middle. What could be an excellent triangle becomes an overlong two-hander, despite Lyle and Norma clearly having more to give.

Finally, the climax of the show fails to spark - Leo and Benny dance around each other and square up for an hour only for them both to end up back where they started, with the same fundamental disagreement at the same emotional pitch. It’s an engaging dilemma, and it has good dramatic foundations, but it fails to build up to heights that its themes deserve.

Photography: Zack Layton

The Value of Names runs at The White Bear from Feb 11th– March 1st

Written and Directed by Jeffrey Sweet

Box office

Produced by Hint of Lime Productions in association with ANDTheatre Company

Reviewed by Harry Conway