Eimear King is a young person from North Lanarkshire. During October, Eimear attended My Romantic History as part of the Works festival. Here is what she thought….
This was a very funny play with adult themes concerning the two main characters and their different respective relationships with each other and others.
The play begins conventionally with Tom, (played by Garry Collins), as the narrator. He is in a new job and he is awkward and uncomfortable. Against his better judgement he accepts an invitation to a works night drink, from Sasha, (played by Katrina Bryan), meets Amy, (played by Jessica Tomchak) and in a drunken moment Tom and Amy go back to Amy’s flat and end up in bed. Without any thought or planning they fall into a relationship to which Tom is not committed and we learn of his apparently justifiable reservations.
Amy appears needy and clingy.
The play then shifts to Amy’s perspective as narrator. Using the same lines and situations, we learn that Tom has his failings and far from Amy being desperate we can see she has her own past histories that have lead us to this point in the characters lives.
Tom is not who we have thought he is and now appears vague and even racist.
Amy becomes pregnant and there are difficult decisions to make. Tom stands by Amy. They grow up but does a proper relationship begin yet? It is left on a cliffhanger, unkown how their lives will continue, which adds to the effect.
This was a clever and well written play with a nice twist on the standard love story. Apart from one glance; one moment – the main characters never have any romantic moments, their relationship is very casual.
There are some nice touches of stagecraft – a vertical bed, a granny puppet and the same simple set of three chairs, a desk and one stage divider, are used for the office; the pub; Amy’s flat and all other scenes.
DC Jackson uses the perspective of both main characters to full effect and in addition, another interesting plot device is Amy’s selective memory regarding her old boyfriend’s tattoo. If she can forget about this significant detail, how many other smaller things has she forgotten or exaggerated? How many things do we all forget?
The author has written an interesting and very funny play about relationships that is competently portrayed by Garry Collins and Jessica Tomchak whose performances are strong. Gary Collins is generally likeable, even through his character’s failings. Katrina Bryan does well having to perform different characters.
Each of three actors play multiple roles, (young/old; male/female) and are all produce engaging performances. Garry Collins was a particular favourite for the audience, as he plays his character with a large degree of sympathy.
A thoroughly entertaining play, enjoyed by a small audience in an interesting thrust theatre. Author DC Jackson was kind enough to speak to the reviewer after the performance and was pleased with the performance on the plays last night of the run.
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