Out of Season by Neil D’Souza. Hampstead Theatre Downstairs , Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London to 23 March 2024.

4✩✩✩✩ Review: William Russell.

“A sparkling comedy with bite about the dangers of a weekend reunion twenty years on.”

Ibiza out of season on a holiday celebrating a birthday three middle aged men return to the same hotel they stayed in some thirty odd years ago to the same room hoping it will be like last time – birds, booze, drugs and sun on the beach. Neil D’Souza’s comedy, his first play, is both funny and sad as the past fractures the present. Hope may spring eternal for some, the birds may be a little older than the last time, and the room is now laughably described as luxury although one feature, the built in walk in wardrobe, remains. By the end of the long weekend lessons have been learned, there are promises for a better future for some and what amounts to blood on the carpet for others.

Chris (Peter Bramhill) and Dev (Neil D’Souza) are first to arrive – Michael (James Hillier) has been held up. Thirty years ago they had all been in the same boy band but it broke up. They had holiday here then and the reunion is one of those things middle aged men sometimes do when trying to recapture the past forgetting that the past was maybe not quite a happy as the remember it to have been. Also that since then they may have changed. Reunions are dicey things to hold. They meet Amy (Catrin Aaron) and Holly (Kerry Bennett) who are also on holiday, a little younger than they are but mature women, and equally up for whatever comes along. But in act two when Michael appears things change. Just why that walk in wardrobe is important is revealed as is why the band broke up – finding your lost youth is dangerous. The performances are spot on, although the play does get rather crammed into the set in the downstairs theatre – things could do with a little more space. Chris, the shadow of the pretty boy member still, has brought his guitar, so we get some songs from their past just to show what might have been or why it never happened which add to the mix perfectly. Boys together can have fun but sometimes fun becomes bullying and what we learn is that the missing Michael, who the other two are looking forward to seeing, is and was a bully, Dev was the one bullied and Chris went along with it all then - and still does. Drugs get taken, birthday cake consumed – it is Chis’s birthday – guys get tied up on the double bed which should but doesn’t become two and a truly terrible drink they once created called a Rula Lenska – why is great to discover - is consumed. D’Souza has delivered a first rate first play, a comedy with bite and laughs which director Alice Hamilton has ensured works smoothly from beginning to end.

Cast

Catrin Aaron – Amy.

Kerry Bennett – Holly.

Peter Bramhill – Chris.

Neil D’Souza – Dev.

James Hillier – Michael.

Creatives

Director – Alice Hamilton.

Designer – Janet Bird.

Lighting Designer – Matt Haskins.

Sound Designer – Harry Blake.

Movement & Intimacy Director –Sarah Walton.

Fight Director –Kev McCurdy.

Dialect Coach – Roisin Carty.

Song – Out of Season by Gil Cang, Neil D’Souza & Matt Sutton. The Academic by Matt Sutton.