STAGE
Di And Viv And Rose
Hampstead Theatre
★★★★✩
IN A NUTSHELL
Great performances and goodwill paper over any cracks in Amelia Bullmore's lively ode to female friendship.
REVIEW
Viewed from sufficient distance, the planet is featureless. The crevices and eddies of the surface are invisible and inexplicable to an alien.
And such it is with men viewing female friendships. We are clueless outsiders, blindly marking subtleties we cannot fathom. We are still bitching about A when A has been forgiven. We're busy praising B's steadfastness as B heads to cold exile.
Female friendship has a high drag coefficient, swift and slick, while men's sensibilities on the matter are more like a portly buffalo in a headwind.
Di And Viv And Rose does not illuminate the underpinning of such friendships but does present the reason they are worth fighting for. Mutual memories make meaning.
We follow the bustling threesome from an '80s uni house share through the grubby doings of everyday life for the next 27 years - all set to a cracking soundtrack.
Separations, sadness, sex, no sex and men attempt to slice and dice the triumvirate but their bond is not lightly broken.
Writer Amelia Bullmore pulls predictable plot levers to test their loyalties and the soapy traumas come too thick and fast but it's all done with such generous spirit and at such speed that cackling, crying and cluelessness roll into a single bubble of glee.
The cast are a joy. Anna Maxwell Martin is utterly beguiling as the gently promiscuous Rose but there are engaging performances from Tamzin Outhwaite as lesbian Di and Gina McKee as feminist-lite Viv.
There is little here that will linger and it's certainly not without flaws but, like Space Dust and Love Cats, it's all delightfully poppy.
Until Feb 23. Go to hampsteadtheatre.com.
