Review by: Paul Towers, 24 May 2018
Blink by Phil Porter
An Upstairs at the Western and Selfless production
Directed by Josh Rai
Upstairs @ The Western, 24th – 25th
May 2018
“Blink tries to make sense of modern romance.”
What is love? What is a relationship? How does modern technology
factor into it?
Blink tries to make sense of modern romance.
Sophie (Katie Amanda Smith),
a software developer, has been nursing her terminally ill father in the house.
Once he has passed she uses the money he left her to divide the house into two
flats. She takes the upstairs and lets out the downstairs to Jonah. Jonah (John
Saxton) is an unworldly, naïve farmer’s son. His mother has died and he has
left the security of the "self-sustaining
religious community" to experience life in London. By chance he ends up
renting the bottom floor of a converted house in Islington with the legacy his
mother left him to escape his father’s cloying ways.
So far so good. But where it takes a bizarre turn is that
she leaves the baby video monitor that she had used to keep an eye on her
father connected. Obviously intrigued by her new lodger she posts the receiver
for the baby monitor to him and he takes to watching her as she goes about her
normal day. This would be very creepy if it wasn’t for the fact that she, the
watched, instigated it and he, the watcher, is unaware that she knows or even
that she is his landlady. That is, until one day she drops a load of things on
the floor just as he is watching her and he puts two and two together.
Now that they both know that she is watching and that he is
complicit they start a remote relationship, eating meals together, watching TV
together all courtesy of the magic of wifi.
Gradually they start to go out to places together, but still
not together. Not interacting. Until eventually they decide to take things a
step further and move in together. But of course it doesn’t work. Their voyeur/exhibitionist
relationship is as close as they can handle.
This may all seem very odd but, if it works for them, who
are we to judge?
John Saxton and Katie Amanda Smith do a fine job of bringing
this idiosyncratic couple to life with comedy and pathos.
Blink is on at Upstairs at The Western again tomorrow,
Friday 25th May and tickets are still available
Upstairs at The Western http://upstairsatthewestern.com/
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