The Room Upstairs comes to The Wardrobe Theatre as part of Theatre West’s season of new plays. Each performance is preceded by Tiramisu, a short two-hander by Martin Malcolm that makes clever use of the actors’ multilingual skills. This takes a wry look at a young couple interviewing an eager applicant wanting to become their little boy’s nanny. The job description requires that she should be able to immerse the child in her own language, which is Italian. The writing is crisp and efficient, and in just a few minutes we learn a great deal about the relationship between the man and his off-stage wife. We also discover that their little boy is something of a handful, and some intriguing questions are raised about the job-seeker’s background and motives. Well-acted by Jack Cottrell and Isabel dos Santos, Tiramisu is a tasty amuse-bouche.
The Room Upstairs is also a two-hander, and again features child-related difficulties, but in this case the problem is that the much-wanted child stubbornly refuses to be conceived. It begins with an apparently light-hearted question: is it appropriate to talk dirty during sex when you are trying to have a baby? Ambitious career woman Clem and her affable partner Toby have an excellent relationship, a new house, and a promising future together. Lois Mackie and Todd James are entirely believable as a likeable young couple for whom parenthood is the next logical step. But after six or seven unsuccessful months have passed their lives begin to take a different course. Sex, which had been such fun, has now become weighted with a new seriousness. Some of the spontaneity and random silly banter of their relationship has gone, and there are now awkward silences and a sense that some topics have become taboo. Social pressure, both real and imagined, begins to open cracks in their relationship. Clem shares her worries in the safe anonymity of social media, and at work continues to pretend that motherhood has no interest, but Toby is compelled to share their dark secret with his sister. Their secret is out.
Lois Mackie’s portrayal of a likeable young woman driven to desperation is very moving, charting with great precision Clem’s gradual loss of control over her own life. At fourteen this was a girl who vowed she would never have children. Now, at thirty, she hates herself for having fallen victim to the primitive, instinctive drive to reproduce. She has just broken through the glass ceiling at work, yet she is beginning to see herself as a failure. IVF has not worked, and their funds are running low. Todd James’s Toby is an ordinary, well-intentioned man whose default position had been one of cheerful optimism. Now he tries to be pragmatic, suggesting that they should agree a deadline beyond which they stop trying. Clem arrives at a very different solution to their dilemma, and the play’s secure foundation in domestic reality suddenly shifts and becomes something less certain, more like a folk tale of the supernatural kind. Director Hannah Drake has said that it is this sudden shift that attracted her to the play, and there is no doubt that she and her talented actors have carried it off very well, taking us into a bizarre world that may or may not just be Clem and Toby’s shared fantasy. There were some in last night’s audience who were unconvinced by this transition, but I found it satisfyingly strange and disturbing.
The Room Upstairs has some thought-provoking observations to make about an important problem that many have found hard to discuss openly. We see that failure to conceive can become a hidden kind of grief, a secret mourning for a child that never was. Hannah Drake has directed with imagination and, together with sound designers Chris Collier and Jack Drewry, she has made skilful use of pre-recorded dialogue and sound effects. The play is perhaps five or ten minutes too long, but its ambition is admirable, and both actors’ performances are outstandingly good. Catch it if you can. ★★★★☆ Mike Whitton 26th October 2016
