Rotterdam review, Trafalgar Studios 2

Great theatre can reduce you to tears for the most unexpected reasons, and Jon Brittain's Rotterdam is great theatre. We meet Fiona and Alice living happily, if furtively, as a couple in the Dutch city of Rotterdam. It is New Year's Eve. Seven years into their relationship, Alice is finally about to come out to her parents when Fiona drops a bombshell. She is, she says, not a gay woman at all, but a straight man in the body of a woman, and she can no longer manage the pretence.

Against this heightened emotional and physical backdrop, Rotterdam explores the nature of relationships. What happens to a relationship when the person for whom you fell no longer looks or sounds the same?  What happens in the bedroom when nothing is familiar anymore? How fixed, and how fluid, is loyalty when it impacts our sense of self and our sexuality? Brittain uses Dutch traditions as lively punctuation and drops in warm and funny twists and turns using two versatile minor characters, but at Rotterdam's heart is a couple testing the boundaries of love.

It is telling that despite extreme heat in London this evening, the tiny studio space that is Trafalgar 2, was sold out. The word has clearly gone out about Donnacadh O'Briain's tightly paced production. Rotterdam is clever, funny, and deeply moving. Driving the action is Anna Martine as Fiona/Adrian. She delivers a totally convincing, superlative, performance. Two scenes in which she grapples with the fallout from her decision had a number of us in tears. As Alice, the deadpan Alice McCarthy is the perfect foil as a woman for whom politeness is so important, she can never be honest. When her world starts caving in, where will she focus her displaced anger and anxiety?

In conclusion: You have to feel strongly about a play to sit up till the small hours blogging it. In recent weeks I've walked out on the Almeida's deadly dull They Drink It in the Congo, and while I enjoyed Strife at the Minerva in Chichester, it was instantly forgettable. I didn't blog either. Rotterdam has broken that duck. It finishes on Saturday. Grab a ticket if you can.

References
Rotterdam, Trafalgar Studios 2, Tickets


Trafalgar Studios, 14 Whitehall, London SW1.    Run ends August 27.