Following sold-out runs in New York and Los Angeles, “Table 17” – Douglas Lyons’ “heartfelt” and “hilarious” one-act play about a pair of ex-lovers reuniting for what might be a date – has arrived in the UK, said Isobel Lewis in Time Out.
Zipping back and forth in time to show us moments from the couple’s past relationship, this breezy piece constantly wrong foots the audience, flipping from “laugh-out-loud hilarity to genuine tragedy in minutes, changing costumes and switching timelines at equal pace”.
Directed by Tony-winner Zhailon Levingston, the production is a “stylish and exhilarating theatrical experience” that is driven by “powerful, emotive” performances. It also has a deft, confident humour that makes the play’s “emotional rug pulls all the more devastating”.
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“As psychological enquiry, Lyons’ writing doesn’t cut particularly deep,” said Matt Wolf on London Theatre: his play sits on the “featherweight” end of the dramatic scale. What makes it work – here as in New York – is a top-flight cast “charging through the text’s cheesier moments”, and “roping the audience in from the start as ready participants in the fun”.
Musical theatre star Marisha Wallace turns in a typically “magnetic” performance as flight attendant Jada, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. Jamael Westman (London’s first Alexander Hamilton) makes her ex properly rounded by “sensitively balancing his ridiculousness with his depth of emotional injury”. And Michael Rishawn almost steals the show with his delicious comic turn as the restaurant host, as well as other ancillary characters.
For me the “real magic” lies in the way the Kiln Theatre’s small space has been transformed by Amy Jane Cook’s sleek, nightclub-meets-cabaret design, said Hang Yuen on What’s on Stage. A luminous tiled platform, a curved ribbed booth, and tiny amber table lamps put the audience inside an intimate late-night lounge, with a striking geometric ceiling, and excellent coloured lighting, completing the effect.
This is not a deep play, that is true, but it’s inventive and entertaining and also powerfully theatrical.
Kiln Theatre, London NW6. Until 24 October.
