Heisenberg: the Uncertainty Principle review, Wyndham's Theatre

Alex is a butcher in his seventies. One day, while sitting on a park bench in London, a middle-aged American woman kisses him on the neck and all of a sudden everything that Alex has known is upended.  Georgie is a school secretary with a case of adult ADHD. She talks and moves like a hurricane constantly creating winds around Alex that blow him in unexpected and unwarranted directions. From the kiss to the twist, it's all about uncertainty.

Heisenberg: the Uncertainty Principle takes an idea from physics - that simply by someone observing an event, the event is changed (my understanding) - and plays with it through an improbable love story in which Georgie exerts a mesmeric hold over Alex to create what she needs in life. This includes a level of certainty, which she accrues through curious and uncomfortable meeting and mating scenarios. If the what-if was reversed and it was Alex cynically reeling in Georgie, would our responses be as benign? 

Interestingly, playwright Simon Stephens, suggests that even while Georgie exerts power over events, it is Alex who has the ultimate power - the money Georgie needs to return to New Jersey and look for her son. Perhaps it is always the way that an old man's pull is his money and a younger woman's pull is her sexuality, but it's disappointing that there isn't something deeper and more challenging underpinning Heisenberg: the Uncertainty Principle. Running ninety minutes, the premise is slight and unconvincing. 

In conclusion: Not enough tricks are made and too many tricks are missed for this play to be satisfying. That said, the majority of last night's audience clearly loved Heisenberg: the Uncertainty Principle. Anne-Marie Duff is an irritating but well-played Georgie and Kenneth Cranham is charming as Alex in this production by Marianne Elliot. 

Wyndham's Theatre, Charing Cross Road, London WC2.  Run ends 6 Jan 2018