★★★★

Reviewer - Bronagh

*Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in return for an honest review.

This production contains strong language, adult themes, and references to intoxication, violence, and sexual abuse.

Can’t Wait to Leave is the debut full-length play by Stephen Leach, who also directs its world premiere run at the Waterloo East Theatre. A one-man performance, we follow the story of 19 year old Ryan during his last six months spent living in a soulless London.

The set is simple – a few graffitied chairs in what appears to be a waiting room. Posters on the wall at the rear of the stage don’t tell us what we’re waiting for. It could be anywhere – a council office, a doctor’s surgery, a job centre.

As the play starts we meet Ryan, played by Zach Hawkins. He builds an immediate rapport with the audience, with a generally confident delivery and good comic timing. As the play progresses, Hawkins takes on the other characters in Ryan’s life and while a couple of accents are rather geographically untraceable, the characterisation is clear. He convinces as a larger than life city boy, a vacuous influencer (complete with very relatable hashtags that land well with the audience), a proper geezer of a dad and plenty of others. They’re immediately recognisable with just a slight shift in posture and attitude.

The play starts with humour and rattles along with a great pace as Ryan lets us get to know him a little and then talks about his dislike of London life, a city he only chose as his big brother Ben (Benson) was living there. We meet Ben and his mates in a city bar – living the high life in their well paid accountancy jobs, while Ryan struggles to get by as a Deliveroo driver. He doesn’t fit in with this flashy crowd and it isn’t long before we begin to see how isolated he is in this half life that he is living.

Ben is moving away with his girlfriend Shalini – he announces it in the bar. It’s news to Ryan.. As the play progresses, Ryan becomes increasingly isolated – he doesn’t have friends of his own, doesn’t hang out with his flatmates, his dead end job has antisocial hours and his social life is made up of casual hook ups on Grindr – we’re told about them with an almost clinical detachment.

Flashbacks to Ryan’s childhood help us to get a better understanding of his apparent lack of ambition and aimless existence. At school he blended in with the biggest gang in order to remain anonymous, joined in the bullying of the queer kid, and failed most of his exams – unlike his over-achieving brother, the big success story. A visit home for Christmas reveals that his family fail to make time for him as well, he doesn’t fit in and seems to be an after-thought to them. On the surface, Ryan doesn’t seem to care about this growing distance, but Hawkins’ intelligent performance makes the character’s growing loneliness and unhappiness very clear.

The only connection that Ryan seems to make is with an older gay man, Richard, who he meets through his brother. But there’s no real emotion in this “relationship”. For Ryan it’s convenience, but what’s in it for Richard? He is 30 years older than Ryan and they are poles apart. Ryan is bisexual, Richard is not impressed, almost scathing in his reaction. It’s an uncomfortable friendship.

As the play reaches its climax, a traumatic incident builds to Ryan breaking down. It’s difficult to watch and a stark contrast with the humour that peppered the first half of the play. Increasingly frantic, he spirals out of control, ultimately bringing us full circle back to where we first met Ryan – in that anonymous waiting room. It’s been an upsetting journey to get us here, but the play does end on an optimistic note, which we definitely need after the misery that’s just been heaped on this young man.

As Ryan, Hawkins gives a strong performance. he has excellent presence and energy which doesn’t let up throughout the play, he’s equally convincing whether he’s delivering quips to the audience or showing us Ryan’s disillusionment, anger and despair, it’s an impressive portrayal of somebody who knows they want to leave, but doesn’t know where they want to go.

The staging is simple, making good use of lighting and sound effects to set the scene, and with occasional voice-overs for additional characters. Simple costume changes were effective but I don’t think Ryan needed to check his phone every time he got a text message, it became more of a distraction after a while and it was clear enough from the script and performance as to what was going on!

The writing is very impressive, particularly for a debut. It has a good mix of light and shade and plenty of laugh out loud moments, which are important given the dark turn that the story takes later on. However, advertised as running for 60 minutes, the running time is actually an hour and a half, which is around twenty minutes too long as I did find my attention wandering at a crucial plot point, which was a real shame.

Overall, this is a challenging, hard-hitting and honest exploration of loneliness, isolation and self-discovery, a very strong debut.