Alex is the original hot mess. We first meet her drinking tequila and lime, snorting coke, gagging as if to puke, and chatting garbage in a club toilet. Oh, and she is also a jealous female fuckboy with a ravenous appetite for men. Shy, awkward Joe, whom she spies on the crowded dance floor, stands no chance. “I’m not really a club goer” says panic-attack prone Joe. “Your dad-dancing is quite bleak” she replies.
A one-night stand follows, though Joe is initially more interested in making tea and watching TV than making love. “You don’t need to pretend to do the Mr nice guy thing” Alex tells him in a fit of encouragement. Later she rates his performance at 7 out of 10, so perhaps her warm words do the trick.
Joe (a hard-working Josh Crook) soon finds himself smitten with the deeply damaged Alex (played with near-feral belligerence by writer Megan Walls). “Emotions make me do crazy shit” says Alex by way of warning and not insubstantial foreshadowing. Still, the girl initially tries her best at giving the budding relationship some legs.
Joe, desperate for a “proper girlfriend” invites Alex to meet his lonely, grieving alcoholic dad (Felix Badcock oozes paternal apathy). Days later, jealousy of Joe’s ex and an imagined slight sees Alex turn up uninvited at dad’s house. Both are three sheets to the wind and are spiralling lower. What could possibly go wrong?
The set up for Lips is promising enough. Unfortunately, it is hard to decipher the tone that Walls is aiming for or what she wants us to make of her characters, thinly drawn as they are. There are times the piece threatens to veer into rom-com territory, even if one suspects some of the humour is unintentional. Ultimately one cannot summon enough empathy for any of the characters to wish them a future together. The mix is not aided by some oddly jarring romantic background songs, and blaring techno that on occasions makes the bitty dialogue hard to hear.
Writer: Megan Walls
Director: Mariam Pope, Maddy Hunter, Lucy Speer
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