Review: Remembrance Monday (Seven Dials Playhouse)

Review by Sam Waite

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

In the intimate, black box space of the Seven Dials Playhouse, seating has been arranged so that, in addition to the usual end-on formation, a small in-the-round area has been created. With some of the audience startlingly close to the small stage, and others elevated and watching from afar, there’s a real sense of claustrophobia and being under a microscope for the struggling man at the centre of Michael Batten’s Remembrance Monday.

In this world premiere, we meet Julius in the bathtub, mocking his husband for his choice in hair products – a sweet, fluffy scene that darkens as Connor resists the repeated requests to stay home that night, and as we revisit this moment multiple times. Julius feels out of sorts as he’s reaching middle-age, with his dancer’s flexibility long gone and increasing lapses in memory opening up the play’s non-linear format – along with revisiting that pleading moment in the bathroom, we find Connor and Julius in key moments throughout their lives together, from first date to marriage, from joyous times to devastation.

Performed in such an intimate venue, the technical work on Remembrance Monday is astounding. Jack Weir uses lighting to provide some sense of what is happening as opposed to simply being remembered, and creates striking visual moments to punctuate scenes – at one point, the light overhead closes in the momentarily show only Connor’s face, a moment I can call only cinematic in its command of the audience’s attention. One might assume the crowd noises on busy date nights, impressively seeming to come from all angles, might be Sarah Weltman’s key contribution as sound designer, but a later scene is so distorted, so struggled to be properly remembered, that the voices of the actors echo ominously – not well-versed in these practises, I found myself fascinated by how two unmic’d actors barely two feet from the front row could be so effectively and mesmerizingly distorted.

Michael Batten, most recently seen as both writer and performer in Self Tape, dives headfirst into the inherent confusion of memory, his plotline deliberately disjointed but following his themes closely enough to not lose the audience. His dialogue is largely naturalistic, with anything that doesn’t seem organic to a real conversation seeming to hint at something being amiss, or simply not part of an actual scene between the two men. Using repetition to great effect, his script gradually moves the sense of intimacy inherent to the performance towards a strangling, deeply uncomfortable feeling of entrapment. Spanning just 80 minutes, Remembrance Sunday’s careful, controlled pace is owed largely to the delicate balance of lingering in emotional moments and embracing the too-fast nature of life in Batten’s text. 

Clearly understanding the presence and importance of the growing sense of unease, Alan Souza’s direction is increasingly insular and tense. The oft-repeated scene in the bathroom is played with an increasing tension and decreasing naturalism – this rising intensity helps the audience to follow the detachment from reality that is central to the play’s climax, and the more frenzied, uncomfortable pacing helps us to understand just how desperate Julius’s mental state is becoming. Souza’s blocking has Connor using entrances on three of the four corners of the stage, and perhaps would have used all four had the space allowed it, creating a confusion and increased disorientation that magnifies Julius’s inner turmoil.

Matthew Stathers is warm and likable as Connor, bringing a great deal of charm and charisma to the role. He also makes brief appearances as a therapist treating both husbands, though obviously only seen in session with Julian for this reason. A real air of frustration and belief in his choices makes Connor still likable even when decisions made in flashback scenes may be harder to agree with that the early, more doting years of the relationship. Never leaving the stage, even being present prior to the opening scene, Nick Hayes is revelatory as Julius – just the right amount of neurotic, of charming, of desperate. Spanning key moments of a relationship from the most exuberantly happy to the most troubling and heart-breaking, his emotional core is essential to just how gripping the production is, even in the moments that raise more and more questions. Hayes’s performance in particular is aided by movement director Dianté Lodge, who ensures that Julius still moves like a dancer, but that his now-limited flexibility and struggle to move as he once did come across more clearly.

Andrew Exeter’s bathroom set is stylish, minimalist, and utilitarian – not only does its open centre allow for scenes set elsewhere to play out, but the set is used impressively to store wardrobe options for the actors to cycle through as we move back and forth in time. Renzo Allen’s costuming consists at first only of underwear, with Connor’s black boxer-briefs and Julius’s designer brief already telling us something about their differing personalities. Quickly changed and discarded items reveal more, with an everyman touch to Connor’s wardrobe and a preppy hint in Julius’s. Looking back at the performance as a whole, it’s interesting to see just how well every element tied together this insular, self-contained story.

Making its world premiere at the Seven Dials Playhouse, it would be unsurprising to see a triumphant, ever-expanding future for Remembrance Monday. Whether this means further small-scale productions, its joining the ranks of many recent fringe-to-West End transfers, or leaning fully into its cinematic qualities to put the work on film, it’s difficult to see a future in which Remembrance Monday is quickly forgotten. Bolstered by its strong performances but soaring thanks to its technical team and the sheer strength of the material, this is proof that new, quality work is alive and well in UK theatre.

Remembrance Monday plays at the Seven Dials Playhouse until June 1st

For tickets and information visit https://www.sevendialsplayhouse.co.uk/shows/remembrance-monday

Photos by Danny Kaan