Kashyap Raja’s tale of a long-distance romance has great writing, even if the central conceit does not quite come off.
24 March 2022
Kashyap Raja is a talented writer whose dialogue sometimes achieves poetic levels of poignancy. But ‘Letters’, although an engaging and often funny 80-minute romance, never quite convinces as a drama.
Englishman Josh spends his days working in an unsatisfying IT job and his evenings practising dance moves at a samba class. One evening he meets artist Mary, a master’s student from small-town Argentina on a year’s study in London. A passionate romance ensues until the inevitable happens and Mary has to return home. The lovers’ airport goodbye is the only time we see them physically together, as what follows is a long-distance relationship that progresses entirely by letter.
Josh, a fastidious, over-privileged, millennial with something of a white saviour complex, gets made redundant and moves to India to experience ‘real life’ and write endless letters to Mary. Suitably awoken to life’s hardships he returns to London and thence to shovelling pig-shit on a farm in Sussex, the realisation dawning in his mind that he has fallen in love with his Argentine correspondent. I am not sure Josh’s journey worked for me, but I am far from being a millennial.
Mary, much the more attractive character, lands a sought-after job at the national gallery of Argentina ands falls deeply in love with a poetry-writing beau who moves in, bringing his favourite pillows and an obsession for asking her if she’s OK. The relationship does not work out, evidenced by the fact that reassurance-hungry poet no longer wipes the food away from her mouth in restaurants. Hell Mary, we have all been there. As so Mary, like Josh, starts to think tenderly of her letter-writer across the ocean, all the more so when she finds out she is pregnant.
Tom Everatt is likeable as Josh and certainly works hard. But somehow, he never manages to capture the essential vacuity in Josh’s character. Alina Ilin brings a warm sprinkling of Latina zest to the much better written female character and is perfectly cast as Mary.
James Roose-Evans’ 1980s adaptation of Helene Hunt’s novel 84 Charing Cross Road proves it is possible to make the dramatic conceit of a relationship that develops entirely by mail work on stage. Technically speaking Kashyap Raja does a great job in bringing the characters’ interconnected monologues together in a way that makes sense. He knows how to write character too and the stage setting, a network of overhanging wire branches above the stage from which letters were picked like leaves, worked well.
But the central problem is that a dramatic device that worked in pre-internet 1980s just does not work in 2022. I found myself wondering throughout the performance – how many millennials do I know who write letters anyway? I am 59 and I never write letters. Why would the lovers not just email or Facebook, like everyone else?
It is a small gripe, but I am also doubtful that letters would travel quickly enough between small-town Argentina and small-town India for the drama to work in the way intended.
There is some good characterisation and some top-quality writing in Kashyap Raja ‘Letters’, but for me the central conceit of the play just did not convince.
Duration: 80 mins. No interval.
Mary: Alina Ilin
Josh: Tom Everatt
Writer and Director: Kashyap Raja
Production: Network Theatre
Full Disclosure: Tickets from Central Tickets.
