Don't be fooled. There are tricks afoot here and you shouldn't necessarily judge a book by its cover, flysheet, index or dramatis personae.
Veteran writer Jeremy Paul has form in twisting capers so he's unlikely to waste our time with the off-the-shelf characters we initially meet in the park in director Roger Martin's mercurial two-hander.
First, there's the flirty housewife/student taking wine on a picnic blanket, skirt hitched up to Hull, allegedly spotting water birds.
Why is this streetwise temptress wasting valuable with the nerd-do-well whose drab polyester monotone and obsession with the ungodly would send one of them reeling back to the municipal car park and outta there?
Something's not right here. Patience is required. And a neckbrace for the whipcrack turn-around.
Meantime, a word about Waterloo East Theatre, lodged under the arches, dark and compact. With the trains rumbling overhead like irascible thunder one plink short of an Alka Seltzer, WET is never going to be anything other than artlessly ominous.
So that sets the tone. Who is the watcher and what are they watching? Is it us? Who's on the phone?
Sonia (Sarah Manners) and Kevin (Jon Shaw) are not who they seem which somewhat limits what can be said in a review.
Shaw has played Kevin for sufficient time to tease open the fissures in his character with deft tweezers.
Manners was drafted in the last minute after original star Donna Air broke her leg in a car crash (prompting a quick re-scheduling of the production). But she's grows during the evening, quixotic, urgent and professional in the Curious Business to which we cannot refer.
Broken legs, fractured narratives, disrupted timetables, park life and pond life. It's all vaguely unsettling - and purposefully so.
– From March 2011
