There’s much that appeals about this latest play from Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s company DryWrite, the outfit that gave birth to the all-conquering Fleabag, but also, unfortunately, much that frustrates. What’s undeniably a positive is a warm and witty central performance from the hugely appealing Amy Morgan.
In Vicky Jones’s examination of the choppy and rootless life of a 33-year-old in high-price London, Morgan plays Dee, a Welsh woman who has escaped to the big smoke for a temporary job after she splits up with her boyfriend Sam. She lives in a squalid and minuscule studio flat where, right at the start in the play’s high-point scene, we watch her perform a hilarious striptease routine for a new beau, provocatively squirting the cleaning products and suggestively twirling a pair of wooden spoons.
Dee is on some sort of journey, both personal and sexual, and in Jones’s own production we watch her encounters with a number of people, including friend/lover Vera (Naana Agyei-Ampadu). The trouble is Touch’s tendency is centrifugal when it should be centripetal; we long to learn more about Dee herself and less about the political views of the middle-aged sadist with whom she hooks up. There are some odd bumps in the plot too: why would Dee put up with a permanently broken toilet rather than phone her landlord? Do one-night stands really engage in a post-coital opening of bank statements and reorganisation of their lover’s chaotic finances?
Touch disappointingly amounts to little but there’s much humour en route. It also contains my new favourite dramatic exchange: “What’s the time?” “Saturday.”
Until Aug 26 (020 7478 0100, sohotheatre.com)
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