The Argument review, Hampstead Downstairs

Most people over forty have learned from observation or experience that love and commitment are only the foundations of a successful marriage. It's what you build upon those foundations that determines longevity. Too little cement and the whole thing topples. Too few windows and you're gasping for air. A few too many rainy seasons and the walls develop cracks and tip into full scale subsidence. The only certainty embodied in the words I do is that both parties have good intentions.

William Boyd's interesting short, The Argument, follows Pip and Meredith through the first blip in their three year marriage. We meet them during an argument that blows up out of nothing - she's belittling his intellect and his character because he enjoyed a film she hated. As always in arguments, it is not so much the words as the tone in which they are delivered, that cut to the quick. If Meredith thinks she's being funny, for those of us listening it's the painful and ritual humiliation of a perfectly peaceable adult male who is being denied a voice.  When during the course of the exchange we discover Pip is having an affair, it's horrible, but hardly surprising.

The next 75 minutes is a development of that argument from different perspectives - all, tellingly, diluted with copious amounts of alcohol. Meredith's sharp-tongued mother, Jane, and her stiff and very English father, Frank, debate the break-up through the prism of a couple who've managed an edgy 35-year union through compromise and forgiveness. The couple's single friends, Chloe and Tony, are torn by the contradiction of understanding both Pip's transgression and Meredith's anger, but still wanting a happy ending. Anyway. who's to say Meredith is so exemplary in her behaviour?

In Conclusion: The Argument is not a drama but a series of arguments, though Anna Ledwich's deft direction masks that void. Boyd's dialogue and observation are lively, but ultimately every marriage is peculiarly unique and the debate becomes circular. Having sat through the play, a participant in proceedings, one leaves wrung out and with nothing resolved.

The Argument, Tickets