Strong character work in Folly To Be Wise, though the writing is a little uneven at the Hen & Chickens Theatre
“You start to lose people, even if it’s not on purpose”
For all the stories about broken hearts because of love, there are precious few about the emotions attached to friendships that are no longer what they were. Charlie Dunne’s Folly To Be Wise touches on this as it opens with nearly-30 Johnny reaching out to former childhood friend Ben to catch up over a pint and compare their contrasting romantic fortunes.
But as Ben muses on popping the question to Lottie, his girlfriend of several years, we soon clock on that Johnny’s motivations for reaching out are much murkier. As their pub crawl is curtailed but the party relocated to Ben’s place, with Johnny’s girlfriend Bella also turning up, those intentions become painfully clear with some intense revelations in store.
The rumbling sense of unease as we build up to this is the highlight of Benedict Esdale’s production. A mix of light humour and resonant drama percolating the awkwardness of catching up with someone you once knew so well, and realising just how different you now are, this contrast captured well by Ned Campbell’s initially cheery Ben and Giorgio Morelli’s darker complexity for Johnny.
After this great build-up and then blow-up as those revelations are aired, the play does slightly lose its way in its final segment which shifts the tonal ground significantly and undermines, at least for me, the emotional terrain that has gone before for the sake of drama. Lottie (Rosa Collier) and Bella (Ciara Kaighin Adams) do complete the cast well, even if their roles feel a little comparatively underwritten.
