Hot Air

Ten Pence Short present their debut show which involves two women patiently waiting at the front door of a recently dead man. An interesting concept that seriously overestimates its synopsis, fancying itself as a dark tale about an internet meet, a death, morality, theft, lies, loss and fetish. The reality is this is a fairly light romp that while enjoyable and well acted is light on comedy and suffers from a plot that one can only assume attempts to keep the viewers in the dark, drip feeding them details. But, instead, by the final moments the audience are as baffled as ever to what exactly has just gone on and why the characters act the way they do.
While writer Laura Cairns and Alice Dooley do their upmost with the script it just doesn’t quite get there, attempting to deal with powerful issues but instead filling forty-five minutes of the girls befriending one another with inane chatter about what type of eggs they like and why one of them is neurotic about time keeping. There are some nice, funny and well imagined moments throughout such as a musical number for the finale which show off the girls fine musical voices but only adds to the confusion as quite where the song came from is any ones guess.
An interesting concept, well acted but in need of a redraft to better hammer home the points it is trying to make.

2/5

Martin Miller