REVIEW: WINDOW SEAT at Canal Café Theatre 16 – 18 December 2024

Captain to cabin crew, goose in engine. I repeat, goose in engine.’ ★★★★

What do you do when your plane just won't take off but you're already stuck in your seat? Have a mother-daughter heart-to-heart, bond and learn some family secrets.

Plays about parent-child relationship are often loud: resentments, accusations, past traumas bubbling away then crashing over everything in an emotional tidal wave. Window Seat is not like that. Mother Trix and daughter Lois, well, like each other. ‘I'm so looking forward to spending time with you’ Trix says. ‘You know I'm happy to spend time with you?’ Lois responds. 

That doesn't mean they're not navigating issues. Trix is supportive of her daughter's career and dating life, but not-so-secretly wishes she'd move back home for a bit. Lois accepts her mother's free-wheeling outlook, but resents where loyalty has brought her: when Trix divorced her dad, ‘I took your side and you kept me there’. Their conversations are gentle and clever—writer/director Cleopatra Coleman has done an excellent job of peppering her script with laughs while keeping both characters very real, and very loveable. Performers Maud May (Lois) and Helen Rose-Hampton (Trix) inhabit their roles, and relationship, with ease.

Window Seat's staging is effectively simple—two suitably uncomfortable-looking airplane seats in the middle of the stage, with the performers squeezing and weaving through the crowded audience whenever they navigate the airplane corridors. The occasional lighting change with voiceover brings in the harassed airline staff, grappling with ‘avian disruption’, but what you see at the start is what you get.

This also means that the play's efficient running time—coming in under an hour—is nicely judged. Any longer, and the audience might yearn for some proper drama, some shouting or at least avian peril. Instead, the show wraps up with what is almost a play-within-a-play—a lovely monologue by Trix that gives her daughter (and us) an insight into her past, and vulnerabilities.

In a bleak and cold season, Window Seat is a cozy hug that'll leave you smiling.

Creative Team:

Writer/Director: Cleopatra Coleman

Producer: Hortense Duchemin

Stage Manager: Avery Lythcott-Haims

Costume Design: Thomas Kemball

Graphic Design: Francesca Rigg

Associate Directior: Maia von Malaisé

Cast:

Lois: Maud May 

Trix: Helen Rose-Hampton