LondonTheatre1

London Theatre: Tickets Reviews | News | West End | Off-West End | UK Touring Productions

Book Tickets for London Shows
  • Home
  • Top Selling Shows
    • Musicals
    • & Juliet
    • Anything Goes
    • Back To The Future
    • Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club
    • Come From Away
    • Dear Evan Hansen
    • Dirty Dancing
    • Frozen The Musical
    • Heathers
    • Jersey Boys
    • Les Miserables
    • Mamma Mia
    • Mary Poppins
    • Matilda the Musical
    • My Fair Lady
    • Moulin Rouge
    • Only Fools and Horses
    • Pretty Woman the Musical
    • Six the Musical
    • The Book of Mormon
    • The Drifters Girl
    • The Lion King
    • The Phantom of the Opera
    • Tina the Musical
    • Wicked
    • Popular Plays in London
      • A Christmas Carol
      • Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
      • The Mousetrap
      • The Woman in Black
      • Witness for the Prosecution
    • London Theatres
      • Seating Plans
      • Adelphi Theatre
      • Ambassadors Theatre
      • Duke of York’s Theatre
      • Fortune Theatre
      • Harold Pinter Theatre
      • Lyceum Theatre
      • New Wimbledon Theatre
      • New Wimbledon Theatre Studio
      • Piccadilly Theatre
      • Richmond Theatre
      • Trafalgar Theatre
  • News
    • Interviews
  • Reviews
  • ATG Tickets
    • Alexandra Theatre
    • Aylesbury Waterside Theatre
    • Brighton Theatre Royal
    • Bristol Hippodrome
      • Bristol Theatre Seating Plan
    • Edinburgh Playhouse
    • Glasgow Theatre Royal
    • Grand Opera House York
    • King’s Theatre Glasgow
    • Kit Kat Club London
    • Leas Cliff Hall
    • Liverpool Empire
    • Manchester Opera House
    • Manchester Palace Theatre
    • Milton Keynes Theatre
    • New Theatre Oxford
    • New Victoria Theatre Woking
    • New Wimbledon Theatre
    • New Wimbledon Theatre Studio
    • Princess Theatre Torquay
    • Regent Theatre Stoke
    • Rhoda McGaw Theatre
    • Richmond Theatre
    • Stockton Globe
    • Sunderland Empire
    • Swansea Arena
    • Victoria Hall Hanley Stoke
  • Dancewear
  • Newsletter
Home » Reviews » Review of Happiness by Lily Lowe-Myers at the Bridewell Theatre

Review of Happiness by Lily Lowe-Myers at the Bridewell Theatre

November 3, 2017 Last updated: May 9, 2018 5:28 pm By Peter Yates

An emotional roller-coaster. Actually, no, Happiness is really a roller-coaster about emotions. The roller-coaster bit is provided through a table on castors that gets violently rolled around Ann Holm Petersen’s excellent sterile-chic set design, whose transparent plastic chairs (love them, want one) are flung indiscriminately about the psychologist’s office with tornado-esque abandon. Hatstand Productions

Yes, Lily Lowe-Myers’s pulsating pill-polemic is an edge-of-seat dissection of the tablet-taking generation, the diazepam-dependents and prozac-poppers, to the logical conclusion of negating all emotions by swallowing the
appropriately colour-coordinated Mother’s Little Helper (as originally prescribed by Mick and Keith way back in the ’Sixties).

Feeling angry? Take a red one. Sad? Take a green one. Slightly pissed-off by a text that you read wrong? Take a yellow, or is it a blue? Or orange? To hell with it – swallow the lot. And the consequences of this, as seen through Lowe-Myers’s tightly scripted and intriguingly mesmeric play, is Sad Robot World (copyright Neil Tennant in the Pet Shop Boys song) which apparently is where we are all heading anyway.

Writer Lowe-Myers herself takes on the role of Elizabeth, the prim and proper, diagnosis-by- numbers, tight-assed psychologist tasked with the forcible imposition of emotion-numbing pills on anti-antidepressant rebel doctor,
Christine (Robyn Cooper). This pair are gold dust: what a great team – it’s not the first time they’ve acted together in their Hatstand Productions – and they are adept at drawing the audience in, creating tension, and putting on unsettling display the full gamut of emotions that are meant to be being suppressed. Elizabeth starts cold and calculating, direct and unsympathetic, charmless and unforgiving though we have detected, before Christine’s entrance, that there are chinks in her armour through a hushed ’phone conversation with someone she clearly cares about. Christine is fearless but vulnerable, outspoken but emotionally frail and the knowledge, provided by Elizabeth, that it was her husband who enrolled her in this prison-like institution, eats away at her and breaks down her carefully constructed defences.

They come up with that great trick where the two characters swap roles – Christine sits in the Psychologists’s chair and starts to analyse her tormentor in the way that she herself has been analysed. It’s a great cross-over turning point in the script that incrementally ups the intrigue-quotient and keeps us guessing to the end. No spoilers about the denouement of this little lunchtime gem but suffice to say you won’t be disappointed if you forgo the pub one day and pop along to the Bridewell for your midday break.

These two, Lowe-Myers and Cooper, give us an acting masterclass, aided and abetted by director Matt Costain, that begs… no, demands… no deserves an audience.

5 Star Rating

Review by Peter Yates

Everybody is searching for happiness. But what if it was the only emotion allowed?

In a utopian dystopia not too many years from our own, a woman finds herself at a crossroads. Does she say goodbye to regret, fear and anger or fight for the right to suffer?

Written by Lily Lowe-Myers
Directed by Matt Costain
Presented by Hatstand Productions
Starring Robyn Cooper and Lily Lowe-Myers.
Booking from 31st October 2017 until 17th November 2017.
http://www.sbf.org.uk/

Tagged With: BridewellTheatre

About Peter Yates

Peter has a long involvement in the theatrical world as playwright, producer, director and designer. His theatre company Random Cactus has taken many shows to the Edinburgh Fringe, the London Fringe and elsewhere and he has been associated with the Wireless Theatre Company since its inception where his short play Lie Detector can be heard: Wireless Theatre Company.

Sister Act Tickets

The Throne by John Goldsmith at Charing Cross Theatre

It is 2002 – another Royal Jubilee year, and HRH (Mary Roscoe) is due to open a new Science wing in a 'sink' comprehensive where Dr Derek Jones … [Read More...]

Review of Medico – Museum of Comedy

Dr Anna LaRosa (Dr Stefania Licari) has a lot to say. Just as well, as she’s the only one on stage in this medical comedy, which largely draws its … [Read More...]

Invisible: Written and performed by Nikhil Parmar

Nikhil Parmar’s one-man show, originally written as a TV pilot, manages to touch on a wide range of themes from Islamophobia to modern fatherhood with … [Read More...]

Figure presents a semi-staged performance of Handel’s Serse

Handel’s 1738 opera Serse (or Xerxes) is an exploration of power, love and human frailty. King Serse falls in love with the voice of his brother … [Read More...]

Lea Salonga Dream Again, Royal Albert Hall

Lea Salonga has her fans. She also has some superfans, the ones who yell, “I love you Lea!” at almost every opportunity. If that wasn’t enough, there … [Read More...]

London Theatre 1 and London Theatre One are Registered Trademarks Copyright 2022 www.LondonTheatre1.com
By using our website you’re confirming that you’re happy to accept our use of cookies.
Privacy Policy & Cookies - Advertising - About Us - Newsletter - Contact Us

As an Amazon Associate our website receives a commission from qualifying purchases from Amazon.