The Habits by Jack Bradfield. Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, Eton Avenue, London NW3 until 5 April 2025., 4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.
Photo Credit: Genevieve Girling.
The Habits by Jack Bradfield. Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, Eton Avenue, London NW3 until 5 April 2025., 4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.
“Game show.”
To people like me who had never heard of Dungeons and Dragons, an on line game involving wizards and princes and beasts of mythic proportions – Tolkein has a lot to be blamed for – this debut play by Jack Bradfield takes a little getting used to but it certainly holds one's attention. Set in a gaming cafe in Bromley, although as what we see is a table and four chairs, it really could be anywhere as nothng is there to indicate Bromley. I is not doing all that well and the middle aged owner is thinking he may have to close. Three young players have come to play the game and he joins them and later is joined by a middle aged woman friend. The three are Jess, a student whose brother played the game and has died, Maryn, a stressed trainee solicitor finding escape in the game and Jamie, young man out of work not making all that much effort to find a job. Playing the game is their way of forgetting the problems of their real world, except that their real world becomes part of the fantasy one. Bradfield has created a script that must have been difficult to learn to say the least given the language but the cast cope with the switch from reality to fantasy with great skill and by the end the game has resolved some of the problems of their reality. Ruby Stokes as Jess, the troubled student, and Paul Thornley as Dennis, the owner of a cafe whose days are numbered, hold the whole thing together and director Ed Madden keeps things moving at speed so that the switches between real and imagined are seamless. It is an ideal piece for the Downstairs venue although playing it in the round does mean that sometimes the swift to and fro of very short lines – nobody ever seems to finish a sentence – gets hard to follow. Some parts of the audience just don't get the joke another part did. Whether you end up playing Dungeons and Dragons will be anybody's guess but it does sound more fun than Monopoly or Snakes and Ladders and Bradfield has certainly created a piece worth being staged.
Cast
Debra Baker – Bev
Jamie Bisping – Jamie
Ruby Stokes – Jess
Sara Hazemi – Maryn
Paul Thornley – Dennis
Creatives
Director – Ed Madden
Designer – Alys Whitehead
Lighting Designer – Laura Howard
Sound Designer – Max Pappenheim
