Counting Stars review, Stratford East

Counting Stars is a timely piece of new writing, a love story that suddenly morphs into something darker. We meet Sophie and her boyfriend, Obayomi, working as toilet attendants in The Paradise Club. Both are educated Nigerians, but it's the only work they can get. Ever optimistic, Sophie exploits every opportunity for pleasure, befriending  the women who pay £1 for sprays of Elizabeth Taylor perfume. For physics graduate Obayomi, however, it is a penance to stand grinning in the men's toilets with a bottle of Old Spice while singing rugby songs to keep the clientele amused.

Over 65 minutes Sophie and Obayomi, beautifully played by Estella Daniels and Lanre Malaolu, create thumbnail narratives of their underground lives, gently slipping in and out of role to portray the staff and punters who dominate their choices and their decisions. It is Valentine's night and their first anniversary. Sophie has a surprise planned, but things don't always go to plan in toilets... Will this be the one occasion on which Sophie's optimism is misplaced?

Through both froth and ferment, Atiha Sen Gupta's script for Counting Stars remains light and funny until, in the last ten minutes, there's a dramatic spurt. The kick-off point is very current: what happens when racial tension is unleashed randomly? In a week that saw a Polish national allegedly murdered for speaking in mother-tongue to a friend, Counting Stars demonstrates a moment when a person's colour and origins become both a totem of their power over others and, conversely, their lack of value as individuals. What happens next? That's for us to decide.

In conclusion: Counting Stars explores lives, and a space, that is small, intimate, and confined. It is unclear therefore, why it is set in a cross between a warehouse and a pub. The audience sits on little stools at drinking tables, dwarfed by the theatre's soaring walls and ceiling. Director, Poojah Ghai's intention may be that we - like the club-goers - should be outside the action when trouble looms, but what it does is create a general detachment that was difficult to get past.

References
Counting Stars, Stratford East, Tickets

Stratford East, Gerry Raffles Square, London E15 1BN    Run ends 17 September