Soho theatre is often the bearer of short and sweet offerings, but never more so than with Phil Porter’s Blink, a voyeuristic glimpse into a romance as eccentric as the production itself.
Staged on a pleasingly symmetrical set, the consistently impressive and engrossing leading pair Jonah (Harry McEntire) and Sophie (Rosie Wyatt) sit behind desks atop a grass-like acid green carpet, the only flash of colour in an otherwise autumnal picture. There they begin to individually tell us their story, for the most part only ever fleetingly interacting with one another with the odd smile or worried look.
This is no normal story of girl meets boy, however. Instead a number of coincidences, ranging from losing parents to inheriting money – one through a conventional will, the other via an unexpected treasure hunt sent from the grave – lead them to the same place and the pair embark on a mutually beneficial voyeuristic relationship involving a high tech video baby monitor and no direct interaction.
If it all sounds a bit twisted, it is and it isn’t. Porter’s play is so devastatingly sad and filled to the brim with observant poignancy it never veers into sinister territory, but Jonah’s obsessive tendencies and Sophie’s feelings of invisibility mean the pair is pulled together on the basis of their damaged lives and isolation rather than conventional attraction.
McEntire proves himself yet again to be an actor to watch as the oddball Jonah, playing the misfit with an intensity that radiates energy through the room. Recounting the journey from growing up in a cut-off bizarre religious sect to finding himself in a one-bedroom flat in Leytonstone, parallels with Sophie’s life devoted to her father who appears to be her only friend may seem slim, but their mundane, but strangely beautiful observations of sheltered lives – delivered by Wyatt with a heart-wrenching desperation marked by an ever thinning smile – and utter lack of social skills make them two peas in an oddly constructed pod.
With the pair relying on desk top tannoy microphones to take on the voices of the few other people who make brief walk on roles in their story, dressed head to toe in beige outfits seen only on clichéd librarians or Dalston hipsters, director Joe Murphy’s production is as quirky as you’d predict, but endearingly so.
While comparisons with 500 Days Of Summer and other similarly quirky love stories are justified, Blink is unique. Somehow detached from real life, you’ll find yourself desperately willing the otherworldly couple to make a new life more suited to their painfully delicate souls together.