Review: Parlour Song ***

Jez Butterworth can do no wrong. The man behind Jerusalem, the major Royal Court hit that has made waves across the Atlantic, also wrote this play, which was first performed in New York in 2008 before coming to London the following year.

Critics were fulsome in their praise of a story of a marriage in quiet crisis and this production, the first outside London, opens with a bang – literally.

Ned is showing off to his neighbour. A demolition expert, he is playing videos of some of the places he has blown up, to Dale. He goes into detail about how he lays the dynamite, how best to raze a building to the ground.

It is a bold opening, a piece of accomplished storytelling that draws in the audience, who, after all, have come to see a story.

However, things go downhill from there.

I saw the production on the night before its official opening, so there is room for it to have moved on, the occasional stumbling over lines was entirely forgiveable and no doubt would have been tightened up come press night.

The problem comes from a production that feels too cramped, too messy, too much all over the place to have any real impact.

Director Katie Posner, an impressive talent, has a mis-step here that begins with the design.

In the studio of York Theatre Royal, there was opportunity to make this a small, intense study of a relationship, but the space is too full to allow the story to breathe. The set design doesn’t just fill the room, it overfills it. Signifying the detritus of a marriage and suburban life, it just ends up feeling cluttered. Posner is forced into even using the space around the audience for her actors, which should have rung a warning bell.

The marriage of Ned and Joy, played by real-life couple Simeon Truby and Helen Kay, is in crisis. Neighbour Dale becomes a shoulder to cry on and a warm body in bed for Joy. There are intriguing elements in the play – where are Ned’s possessions disappearing to? But there is too much clutter to really see the story.

The moments where it comes alive are when the actors are discussing the clutter of their lives and the banality of suburbia, but the audience has to work too hard to fully appreciate these moments.

To July 16.