"a fantastic script executed with comic timing by a well-rehearsed and convincing cast each well-suited to their role."
Alison Manning, Earlsdon Echo
"...this was a well-executed and finely-observed comedy of manners, the portrayal of social embarrassment so accurate that I wanted to crawl inside my programme."
Annette Kinsella, Elementary Whatson
While on holiday, Peter and Debbie befriend Elsa: a lusty, Trump-loving widow from Denver, USA. She's less than woke but kind of wonderful. They agree to stay in touch – because no one ever really does, do they?
When Elsa invites herself to stay a few months later, they decide to look her up online. Too late, they learn the truth about Elsa Jean Krakowski. Deadly danger has just boarded a flight to London! But how do you protect all that you love from mortal peril without seeming, well, a bit impolite? Because guess who's coming... to murder!
Steven Moffat's comic play The Unfriend takes a hilarious and satirical look at middle-class England's disastrous instinct always to appear nice.Steven Moffat is an award-winning writer whose internationally successful television shows include Doctor Who, Sherlock and Dracula.
EDI Assessment
In line with our EDI policy, we undertake an EDI impact assessment of all our artistic programming. This play has no central diversity message. On the character notes, there are indications where specific playing gender identifications are called for and there are also recommendations of approximate playing ages. Otherwise there can be flexibility around casting with regard to ethnicity, age and disability.
Earlsdon’s Criterion Theatre’s latest production, The Unfriend, written by Steven Moffat and directed by John Ruscoe, was a great evening of entertainment. It features a fantastic script executed with comic timing by a well-rehearsed and convincing cast each well-suited to their role. Peter (Jon Elves) and Debbie (Cathryn Bowler) are an ordinary British couple who enjoy a cruise, getting angry about the news and are polite to all they meet. So, when Elsa (Christine Evans), an American holiday acquaintance invites herself to stay, it would seem rude to turn her away. Only when it’s too late do they think to google this almost stranger who is about to arrive at their home, discovering a dark, possibly murderous, past they knew nothing about.
Long video screens either side of the stage are used to great effect during scene changes. Initially they show the undulating sea, establishing the setting for the cruise and then a sequence of comic scenes illustrating Peter and Debbie’s eventful journey home, cleverly portrayed purely in short clips and still images. Later the screens show online calls as well as news reports, furthering the story with extra details and adding twists to the plot. Upbeat dramatic music between some scenes also adds to the atmosphere.
The carefully designed set with an open plan kitchen/ living room, stairs, and doors to a toilet and the garden evokes an ordinary home where Peter and Debbie live with their typically grumpy teenage children, believably portrayed by Martin Foley and Morgan Blundell-Smith, though things may be about to change.
Best known for his writing for television, such as Doctor Who and Sherlock, writer Steven Moffat has proven he can diversify into plays with this fantastically witty and darkly comic script. It takes the actors to really bring it alive though, and this they do with skill and panache, knowing just how much to overegg an exclamation and sustain a dramatic pause. Their physicality brings out the humour too, from slapstick falls executed perfectly to well-thought through facial expressions, so much so that the tiniest glance could and did provoke laughter from the audience. Mention must also be made of Raymond 'Dave' Grove and Hugh Sorrill who complete the talented cast as the neighbour and PC Junkin.
This play explores the lengths people will go to maintain the veneer of good manners, even in the face of overwhelming evidence suggesting this may not be someone you actually want staying in your house with your impressionable teenage children, cooking meals for you, making sandwiches for passing policemen and cups of tea for annoying neighbours. Perhaps it would be better to be firm and risk rudeness, or will everything work out for the best?
Alison Manning, Earlsdon Echo
The “stranger at the feast” is a well-worn literary device. From Shallow Grave and Single White Female, to the clinical yet deadly agents of domestic terrorism The Tiger Who Came to Tea and The Cat in the Hat, writers can't get enough of the unexpected guest who arrives to shake stuff up. The Unfriend at the Criterion Theatre takes that premise and sets the controls directly for the taupe, cowering heart of the British middle class.
Elsa - the velour-clad, jewel-bedecked American Black Widow - is essentially Inspector Goole with Louis Vuitton luggage. Bringing strong An Inspector Calls energy, she is an omnipotent force dispensing chaos and unvarnished truths in equal measures. But whereas J. B. Priestley delivered a social lecture, Steven Moffat's sitcom-style farce serves a masterclass in finely-tune cringe.
At its core is the crumbling garden wall of the British psyche: terminally middle-class Peter (Jon Elves) and Debbie (Cathryn Bowler) are so terrified of seeming rude they’d rather host a murderer than risk an awkward conversation. Elsa (Christine Evans), embracing an honesty and insight as brash as her dress sense, makes the perfect foil for their awkward social graces.
If the first half is psychological thriller arriving in a tracksuit and bling, the second half leans fully into end-of-the-pier, whoops-where-are-my-trousers style slapstick humour, with the cast treating us to a gleeful round of television comedy character bingo. Mark Heap-esque Dave Grove effortlessly turns up the Friday Night Dinner nightmare neighbour to 11, while Elves channels his inner Basil Fawlty to near cardiac failure. Meanwhile Alex and Rosie (Morgan Blundell-Smith and Martin Foley) play up to the sitcom-standard baffled teenagers straight from Butterflies. That's a full house!
Overall, this was a well-executed and finely-observed comedy of manners, the portrayal of social embarrassment so accurate that I wanted to crawl inside my programme.
It shows that even when plot devices are well-trodden, good writing and a talented cast can still bring a breath of fresh air to all too familiar tropes.
Ultimately The Unfriend warns us that while a mass murderer is a threat to your existence, a houseguest who won't leave is a threat to your sanity. And while Elsa undoubtedly is a formidable architect of destruction, I still maintain the Cat In The Hat is one of the most terrifying characters in literature. At least Elsa doesn't come with a Thing 1 and Thing 2 to help with the clean-up.
Annette Kinsella, Elementary Whatson