Shifters review: 'beautiful' new romantic comedy offers 'bittersweet tenderness'

The Bush Theatre in West London has long championed new theatrical voices, said Dzifa Benson in The Telegraph – and under the leadership of artistic director Lynette Linton, it is "punching well above its weight in 2024". 

It recently transferred "Red Pitch", about three young black footballers on a gentrifying estate, to the West End; now, the Congolese-British playwright Benedict Lombe's "superb" romantic comedy "Shifters" is moving to the Duke of York's Theatre with "much glitzy fanfare", thanks to its starry line-up of new backers (which includes Idris Elba). Funny and "unabashedly romantic", yet covering "epic existential themes", the play is a triumph that has had audiences getting to their feet and "whooping". 

This "beautiful" two-hander is about two thirtysomethings, Des and Dre, who first met at school as teenagers, and who meet again, years later, at his grandmother's funeral, said Sarah Hemming in the FT. Brilliantly staged by Linton, it "plays like a piece of jazz, looping back and forth between past and present". And though it owes a debt to Nick Payne's time-twisting drama "Constellations", Lombe "has a warm, seductive style of her own, slipping from sharp comedy to meditative soulfulness in an instant". 

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This is "inventive, emotionally astute writing", said Alice Saville in The Independent – and the "will-they-won't-they" story gets a "fevered reaction" from the audience, who "hang on tight through every twist and turn". 

It helps that the play's two stars have "thermonuclear charisma", said Rachel Halliburton in The Times. Tosin Cole, as Dre, has a "rooted, laid-back charm that's a winning antidote to Heather Agyepong's sharp-as-a-scalpel perfectionism". 

The pair pull you effortlessly into the play's "bittersweet tenderness", agreed Tom Wicker in The Stage. Cole "brings easy charm to Dre and a faltering smile that speaks volumes", while Agyepong's Des "bristles with self-protection, but also a compassionate curiosity that cracks her own defences". The pair make "every line sing: they're hugely funny, but teetering on the edge of heartbreak".