Scarcely known in Britain, Lauren Gunderson was the most produced playwright in the US last year (apart from Shakespeare). On the basis of this, you can see why: it’s a snappy 90-minute two-hander embracing love and death, and written for young actors. Since the roles are here played by Maisie Williams (from Game of Thrones) and Zach Wyatt, both making their stage debuts, the production should draw a younger-than-usual crowd. But, likable and smart as the play is, it depends too heavily on a surprise ending.
The situation certainly tickles one’s curiosity. Caroline is a bright 17-year-old, housebound by a serious liver complaint, whose space is invaded by an unknown classmate, Anthony, seeking her help on a Walt Whitman project. At first Caroline, who relies on social media for information about the outside world, is all surly defiance. Gradually, however, Anthony breaks through her defences with the aid of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The couple even share their musical passions, although her devotion to Great Balls of Fire seems no match for his love of John Coltrane.
Seeing an immured, death-haunted teenager re-learning the art of human contact through a great poem and a contemporary’s dogged persistence has an obvious attraction. While Gunderson drops occasional hints that all is not what it seems, I still feel her play depends too much on withheld information: to give away the ending would be even crueller than disclosing the identity of the murderer in The Mousetrap. But, although one test of a first-rate play is that there is no such thing as a “spoiler” since plot is subservient to ideas, the piece is beguilingly performed under Edward Hall’s direction.
Williams, with her remarkably expressive features, shows the capacity to switch from a defensive truculence to a bright-eyed curiosity and unsatisfied hunger for life, while Wyatt captures well the boy’s mix of nerdiness and bewilderment. Gunderson says she is happy to see her play described as “a benediction”: the real blessing would be if she revealed her theme a little earlier in the piece.
At Hampstead theatre, London, until 24 November.
