"Placeholder". Burton Taylor Studio

This review was written for Daily Information, and appears on their website.

Not long after I graduated from Oxford, a very close friend of mine tragically died. It affected me in ways I could not have predicted: I kept mistaking total strangers for her in the street, thinking I could hear her voice. It culminated in a strange and disturbing night when I dreamt that I ran her over in my car.

In Placeholder my own experience was magnified many times. My friend Anna was just a friend, not the love of my life. But in a small way, I felt I could understand and sympathise with what the central character, Sophie, played with dignity, humour and depth by Francesca Kuczynska, was going through.

Placeholder is – like so many plays in this rich, creative period through which we are fortunate to be living – a new piece of writing. The author, May McEvoy, has created something tender, fragile, beautiful and truthful. It addresses grief in an open and honest way, but it also does it with originality and surprises. And perhaps best of all, McEvoy’s script knows the value of not explaining. Without spoiling anything, some of the characters’ decisions are puzzling (to say the least) to the others, and even to themselves. But, with a minimum of gentle prodding, we are left to figure out what’s going on in their heads for ourselves, and the play knows exactly how much to reveal.

The concept is simple – and maybe it could have benefitted from a little more in the way of action and plot. But at the same time, it burns with conviction, and those three staples of any good story, a beginning, a middle and an end, are present and correct. And furthermore, it’s a ghost story. There are distant echoes of Blithe Spirit in the way Sophie is torn between her living and dead partners, but where Noel Coward had acerbic wit, McEvoy has emotional turmoil. Less Blithe Spirit, more Post-traumatic Presence.

Francesca Kuczynska may be the lead, but this is without doubt an ensemble production, and everyone in it gives memorably powerful performances. Declan Ryder as Clym teeters brilliantly between boorish mansplainer and adorably smitten boyfriend. He’s both larger than life and completely recognisable. Janel (played by Flora Symington whose uncle I think lived in the room above me at Merton but that’s not important right now) is hauntingly playful. And there’s a speech towards the end, anticipating life stretching into the future, which envisions the memory of a lover receding into the past: ‘I’ll just be an ice-breaker at parties’. Simple. Powerful. True.

What I really couldn’t understand was why there were only nine people in the audience for the second night. Nine! What has gone wrong with the marketing? This play is like a delicate but beautifully-made ornament. It may be unassuming, but it deserves to be seen.