Review: All comes together perfectly in Dirty Great Love Story on Coventry stage

Some people – you know the sort – never have difficulty getting a boyfriend or girlfriend. Others are less lucky in love, being dumped or having difficulties even starting ongoing relationships. Kate (Karen Evans) and Rich (Dean Sheridan) are at their best friends’ hen do and stag party, respectively. A one night drunken tryst is the start of repeated social encounters over the next two years but never quite hitting it off.

Director Kelly Davidson cleverly uses minimal props to convey Kate and Rich meeting at numerous venues including pubs, disco, hotel, barbeque, wedding reception, christening and pop festival. Although originally written for two main characters, Kelly introduced CC (Alice Scott) and Westy (Adam Lee) as respective best friends, which moved the plot along without taking the focus from Kate and Rich’s awkwardness, unable to communicate their needs, often misunderstanding each other and talking at cross purposes.

The very clever dialogue was largely in verse which needed Karen and Dean to deliver their lines with exquisite accuracy and timing, which they did superbly. Although the rhyming was occasionally contrived, the dry, often black humour had lots of laugh-out-loud moments. CC and Westy’s successful relationship acted as a mirror to highlight Kate and Rich’s lack of success in love either with each other or other people, with CC and Westy acting as excellent foils to their friends. Dean depicted particularly well Rich’s gaucheness and lack of confidence, matching Karen’s portrayal of aspects of Kate’s emptiness and loneliness.

There were many songs playing in the background, detailed in the programme, but most were from an era that this reviewer was unfamiliar with, and so added little, which was probably the case for many of the audience over a certain age.

This was a play when three main facets came together perfectly – a very clever script, superb acting and creative, intelligent directing. The Criterion deserves good audiences for this not very well known play.

Dirty Great Love Story runs until March 23. Visit criteriontheatre.co.uk to book.