Almost Professional Productions

Brighton Fringe

03/03/21

The nerves of meeting a new potential housemate are an experience most of us can relate to. Will they be nice? Will they be messy? Will they be loud? Will they be a serial killer who eats small kittens on sandwiches?

This is the situation that Eve and Alex find themselves in at the start of Almost Professional’s debut show, Threesome, written by Eric Silver. The pair are housemates, living in London and looking for someone to fill the empty room in their house, before they have to pay the rent in it. Judging by their tumultuous argumentative friendship, in which Alex reverts to cynicism and sarcastic quips as his defensive default response, and Eve is loud, overbearing and impatient – they also need a third housemate to balance out their dynamic. Enter Evan, the prospective housemate who grew up in a cult, delivers his opinions with no filter…and is unlikely to bring balance to anything.

As the Zoom-call between the trio takes ever stranger twists and turns down tangents of religion, cults, homophobia, sex, rats and a wide range of other topics, there are some moments of sharp, witty writing and character. However, Threesome, which was originally conceived as a live, staged production, falls foul of the transfer to the digital medium. The at times over the top acting style may have added to the comedy on stage, but boxed into the restrictive format of Zoom, it comes across as strained and over-done. Similarly, moments in which characters break the fourth wall fall wide of the mark, lacking the definition they would have had on stage to make them effective interludes in the conversation between the trio of characters.

Zoom-transfer aside, the production felt underdeveloped. Though it included many funny moments and strong characters, there were several instances in which ideas were introduced into the script that felt out of place among the rest of the characters’ conversation. A discussion about the character of Eve considering sleeping with her boss to get ahead in her career veers towards a conversation around feminism but is cut short, and similarly the final moments of the play feel abrupt. There is no director listed in any credits, copy or press information, and that lack of a director with a view of how the performance works as whole may be the reason for these uneven patches in the show.  

Taking the familiar setting of meeting a prospective housemate, and exaggerating and playing with it to create a comic and entertaining play, Threesome is a promising production that leaves some key dramatic threads untied and finds itself frayed at the edges.

Threesome is available to stream as part of Brighton Fringe Festival until 27th June.