The difficult thing about reviewing comedy, particularly comedy based primarily in wit and dialogue rather than physical comedy or absurd setups, is that it’s very easy to just devolve into a dry recitation of somebody else’s jokes. When a show is as sparklingly funny and clever as Mooncalf, and manages to keep it up over two full hours, this problem only becomes more noticeable. But I’ll give it my best shot anyway.
The premise is simple, at first glance anyway. Mooncalf, written by Maisy Nichols and Daniel Grady and directed by Lily Lyon and George Aldridge, is about a husband and wife scientist duo who have been living on a tiny island called the Mooncalf Stack for the last three years. Beatrice (Simran Chawla) is, in theory, studying a species of limpet, while James (Gideon Coleman) completed his research into the island’s trees quite some time ago. All the while, they have been monitored, interviewed, and observed by a sociologist named Gloria (Thea Barnes), working on her own research concerning married life in isolated settings.
The status quo is disrupted when Melissa (Lara Wantling) and Danny (Harry Wopat) arrive, bringing with them the news that not long after the researchers left, a catastrophe called the Sink left the UK divided into two halves. The two territories have since come under control of the opposing Glorious Rebel Front and the Great Resistance Faction respectively. (I may have got those names slightly wrong, but that’s absolutely the point.) The vote on which group should lead the country is exactly tied, meaning that Beatrice, James, and Gloria will have to be the deciders.
But really, all of this is just framing. The civil war, the political commentary, the apocalypse-just-gone – nobody would ever accuse it of being subtle, certainly. In one particularly egregious example, Danny and Melissa are physically prevented from telling the others about their policy positions lest they receive an electric shock, Danny even going so far as to explicitly spell out that the decision must be made on “vibes alone”. Funny though this very much is, it can come across as a bit clumsy when judged as an attempt at theme.
More nuanced satirical elements, like the two opposing rebel forces being so similar in name and purpose as a commentary on the infighting of ideological groups, are more effective. In general, though, the political elements work well enough because they’re kept in the background, essentially just window dressing compared to the real focus of the show: Beatrice and James’ doomed, failing marriage.
It’s an odd launchpad for comedy, absolutely, but the script and performances deliver a delightful stream of finely-honed witticisms that use each character’s distinct and opposing personalities to great effect. Beatrice and James’s relationship is frayed from the start, and it’s not hard to tell that each fell out of love with the other a long time ago. But living for so many years with (almost) nobody but each other has prevented them from noticing, and stopped them from seeing any alternative.
Thus, when Melissa and Danny arrive, the first new people the pair have laid eyes on in the last three years, the cracks deepen into irreversible schisms practically overnight as James falls for Melissa and Beatrice for Danny. This is where much of the comedy is wrung from. Beatrice and James are so eager to abandon their marriage that they become almost instantly attached to the two new arrivals, despite Melissa and Danny both being about as far from ideal partners as you can get.
Melissa is an aggressive, shouty soldier with little personality beyond her orders, while Danny is a cartoonish misogynist who manages to bring his apparent sexual prowess into virtually every conversation he ends up in. While Danny and Beatrice spend enough time together that their relationship is generally believable, I have to say that James and Melissa shared so few scenes that the romance between them couldn’t help but feel a tad forced. Though it certainly still delivers comedically.
If anything, I felt that James had more chemistry with Danny than with Melissa. The pair make for an excellent comedic double act: James, the kind of man who literally listens to the Shipping Forecast for fun, dovetails beautifully with Danny, who is equally pathetic for the absolute opposite reasons.
In the middle of all of this is Gloria, disconnected from the events of the play and effectively serving as an omniscient narrator. In most of the scenes she’s featured in she tells the characters to “pretend she’s not there”. She observes and records the others, often reading her journal entries to the audience in monologue form. It’s easily possible for the audience to identify with her like this, as we and her both watch the characters interact like caged zoo animals.
Despite her rather sinister ulterior motives, she too is a vehicle for comedy first and foremost, and Barnes gives probably the most wonderfully overexaggerated performance in a play full of them. As a sociology student myself I have to commend the accuracy of the depiction. We are all like that.
Of course, to call Mooncalf a comedy and nothing but would be inaccurate. Around halfway through the second act, after a good ninety minutes of laughing at these characters’ misfortunes and incompetence, the rug is pulled from under us, and we are reminded that Beatrice and James are still supposed to represent real people with a real relationship. They try and fail to talk through their problems with each other, and the situation is exacerbated by the reveal that James has inadvertently been poisoning the very species that Beatrice has been trying to investigate.
Then, in a twist that elicited genuine gasps from the audience, Beatrice pushes James into a rock and accidentally kills him. Somehow, returning to the light-hearted squabbling of Melissa and Danny in the following scene, watching Beatrice cast her vote with James’s blood still fresh on her hands, feels callous and cruel in the best possible way.
The performances were all very good, Chawla as Beatrice plays the perfect straight woman to Coleman’s deeply insecure and chronically nervous James. Similarly, Wantling and Wopat both completely commit to their respective characters’ idiosyncrasies.
The design work is also effective, particularly the set. Designer Christine Seong frames the space in costal rocks and blue fabric, making the whole thing feel more claustrophobic and isolated than it otherwise would. Two extremely versatile small crates are added in the place of chairs to give some authenticity to the middle-of-nowhere setting.
Mooncalf was selected as the show to represent UMDS in its upcoming London showcase in June, and, with its gorgeously witty dialogue, intricate characterisation, and top-drawer performances, it’s definitely not hard to see why. One of the show’s best jokes is a line from Gloria about brains and brawn, and I’d like to end this review by deliberately misquoting it.
“Conclusion: sometimes plays have quantity and quality. That’s why the words are so similar.”
