The Gift @ Park Theatre - Review
A lost episode of Not Going Out? ★★
I recieved a free press ticket for this event. All opinions are my own.
At Park Theatre Park200, Finsbury Park, until 1st March 2025.
Tickets from £15/10 u25s.
Rating: ★★
The Gift is a play that made me reflect on why I go to the theatre. I appreciate that sounds pretentious, but you’re reading a forest green blog called London Culturalist with a medieval cat reading a book as the author image. Did you not expect this?
I go to the theatre for two reasons. I want something that demands my full attention, and is better for being scrutinised, and I want something that leaves me with interesting things to reflect on. I watch TV for something easy that will entertain but rarely challenge, and which does not need all that much brain power to enjoy, which I can watch while pottering in and out to fold laundry, scroll on my phone or chat with company. Both are parts of my media diet I value at different times and for different reasons. I think The Gift was written into the wrong food group.
The premise is sound and could go either way - a man is delivered a (probably) human crap in a box, and spirals while trying to decode the message. There’s enough mystery there to support a narrative, and it’s low enough stakes to be the basis for a comedy. The overall arc of the plot, also, makes sense- a little deception, some romantic strife, soul searching monologues, all good bones. But the meat is sitcom meat, if there is such a thing - maybe that’s what nuggets are made of.
Our trio is familiarly bland - a neurotic middle aged man is having a crisis; his sister is level headed but gets into the fun when she needs to; his best friend is a jokester married to his sister. The sister, Lisa (Laura Haddock), is the most fleshed out character- she’s established via a power suit costume and regular work phone calls as a career woman without enough time for her partner, and through well acted if predictable monolgoues to be missing something in life. Her husband, Brian (Alex Price) is a jokester with no real traits beyond being funny and hungry. The main man, Colin (Nicholas Burns) is not fleshed out enough for his spiraling to be interesting or sympathetic- he’s characterised as being buttoned up and resevered, but also so prone to crises that Lisa’s time is regularly demanded by him. Even his acts of shittiness that he interrogates as potential motives don’t create a pattern of behaviour- he laid someone off; he sent a shitty email; he never wrote back to a pen friend after summer camp. They are calculatedly boring. The set, his flat, is similarly bland, with few hints to his character that we can sniff out.
And I needed something to sniff out. Like a captive lion, I was crying out for enrichment. The dialogue is overwhelmed by one liners and light irony, rarely getting to real conflict let alone theatrical tension. The underlying psychology is spoon fed, emotional monolouges tell us all about how characters are feeling. I’d lap this up on the couch after Christmas dinner with a sherry, but sitting in the dark watching it I just feel unsatisfied. Is that really all there is?
And just like the best tearjerker sitcoms, everything is alright in the end. Our characters get what they want, and do something silly that would wonderfully set up the next self contained episode. It’s sweet, easy watching, and absolutely not a bad piece of writing. It’s just in the wrong medium.
I’m stepping back from Instagram given Meta’s recent corporate actions. What social media sites should I consider using instead?