Review: My Romantic History (Tron Theatre)

A love affair best left in the past

If seeing a new play is like going on a first date, and seeing an adaptation of a classic is like meeting an old friend, then a revival play that hasn’t been staged in nearly 16 years is like hooking up with an ex. Or at least, it is with D.C. Jackson’s My Romantic History, directed by Johnny McKnight. And perhaps that is appropriate. This romcom follows Tom and Amy’s utterly doomed office fling. He’s only with her because he can’t say no; she’s only with him to prove to a coworker (and maybe herself) that she is not a prude. And yes, it is written by a man.

Photo Credit: Mihaela Bodlovic

We start by viewing the relationship from Tom's perspective, played by Lewie Watson. Unwilling to end the relationship himself, he resorts to being annoying, avoidant, and unresponsive in the hope that she will do it for him. I was surprised not only by how irritating he was, but by the fact that I was meant to find him cheeky, relatable, or like just a typical bloke. This is not helped by Watson’s performance, as he comes across as jittery and eager to please. Rebecca Wilkie, on the other hand, gives a sparky performance as Amy, but her character never gets a chance to become believable. For the first half, she exists only through Tom’s perspective, and in the second half we learn that her main motivation is to get one over on her colleague, a relic of 2000s storytelling that loved pitting women against each other.

If I had not been told that this was a revival of a play written in the 00s/early 10s, I would have known anyway. This era of writing – in television, in movies, in novels, in culture generally – had a mean streak running through it. Watch any Hollywood comedy from that era and you will see it – catty comments, selfish motivations, edgy jokes. Today, writing like that comes across as dated and cruel. To make matters worse, now and then there is a line or a delivery that is not funny now and shouldn’t have been written then, either. There is a joke about violence against women, a plotline about a sixteen-year-old being groomed that is played for laughs, and the line “thank god almighty I’m free at last” delivered as an impression of a black American slave.

The one redeeming quality of the show is Julie Wilson Nimmo as crunchy coworker Sasha. She earns the most laughs of the night and rightfully so, but she can’t fully distract from the main couple. Throughout the play, we see flashbacks to their past relationships. The emotional climax comes when each is reunited with their lost love, only to find they aren’t as magical as they remembered. The message, therefore, is that the relationship you have right now isn’t so bad, that maybe these characters should give this car crash of a fling a real shot. It is a cold resolution to a story that has been nothing but negative. As the lights go down on the first tender moment the two characters share, it is far too little, far too late to relive that bitter taste. One star.

Whispers from the Audience: "I really enjoyed it! Very relevent, they only made slight udates with the references to apps and vapes. They do so much with just three people in the cast."

My Romantic History will play at Tron Theatre until the 13th of June