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FringeReview UK 2025

The Gift

Postscript Productions in association with Park Theatre

Genre: Comedy, Contemporary, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, New Writing, Theatre

Venue: Park Theatre 90

Festival:


Low Down

How does a huge patisserie box upend your life? Colin’s received one so logically he asks sister Lisa and husband Brian over to help him look into it. “I think we can all agree it’s passed its use-by date” quips truculent Brian. So how does copywriter Colin slide into paranoia so eloquently? Dave Florez’ The Gift premieres at Park Theatre 90 directed by Adam Meggido till March 1st.

How far you’d go to pursue either vengeance or to resolve one, asks just such questions of how we choose to box up our lives. The Gift is for all of us.

Review

How does a huge patisserie box upend your life? Colin’s received one so logically he asks sister Lisa and husband Brian over to help him look into it. “I think we can all agree it’s passed its use-by date” quips truculent Brian. So how does copywriter Colin slide into paranoia so eloquently? Dave Florez’ The Gift premieres at Park Theatre 90 directed by Adam Meggido till March 1st.

Colin (a magnificently paranoid yet touching Nicholas Burns), Lisa (Laura Haddock, anxious about brother and husband in that order), Brian (wired, problem-crunching Alex Price) make all this so believable. Indeed Florez’ comedy of ad-manners and smart Crouch-Enders emits foul whiffs of vengeance and yet is a sweet play. All kinds of dark are twisted with yet tossed aside.

OCD Colin might prove a paranoid wreck yet can quip back at Alpha-minus Brian: “I was Schrodinger and the contents of that box were either a live cake or a dead cack.” That, at bottom (and there’s a lot of that) is what Florez scrutinises. More than Brian does the dead cack explaining his opinion: “very undoglike… {I’m} more an enthusiast than an expert.”

Displaced enthusiasm, energy and old-fashioned workers’ alienation fuel much of this. As Colin descends into spreadsheets of candidates the world slips by, especially since we hear Colin’s new girlfriend Lily discovers she’s on it, albeit crossed out in red. That works.  Can’t Colin just drop it, literally, and laugh at it all? “’Good time’? This is Colin. He’s got the turning circle of a beached whale” proclaims his sister.

The comedy of Brian and Lisa exiting for at least half of the restaurant dinner they planned, only for Brian to return with an eureka (cue an overkill cancellation) shows how all, in varying degrees are caught up in how their world’s invaded; the smallest boggle unboggles them, including surprise entrances.

Brian’s more curious both to investigate then simply end the mystery, as his and Lisa’s own tensions emerge. Brian then makes an astonishing claim to herald the interval. The retreat the couple plan is cut short and Colin, by now a Refusnik on all levels is causing local anxiety. Quite how much depends on what you feel about a man with a kimono and nothing else.

In some ways a traditionally smart two hours five minutes (it plays more swiftly than its proclaimed time of 130 minutes), Florez in a comedy packed with one-liners edges both humanity and initially brittle warmth into his characters. There’s several apotheoses, so it’s never quite predictable. Whilst perhaps resolving some things a bit neatly, the end’s an exhilarating metaphor.

Sarah Perks’ clean yet humanly abandoned kitchen set gleams with the kind you often see at Park. Lit with surprise darkness by David Howe, it features super-discreet sound design and music from Abby Galvin; which often doesn’t play at all. Letting the words fall is welcome and right. We’re treated (is that the right word? yes) to Dan ‘DJ’ Johnson’s fight direction.

Florez manages to develop the strains of marriage and partners’ desires too. Haddock’s speech about Lisa’s “super-highway” moment is affecting, and later her other admissions about others slipping by to greater fulfilment touches depths the plot tries to resolve. Brian and Colin are given redemptive moments, and Lisa, the most frustrated yet clear-headed assumes greater authority; even if she betrays a similar family anxiety. It’s no coincidence this is all linked. How far you’d go to pursue either vengeance or to resolve one, asks just such questions of how we choose to box up our lives. A riotous blast-off from January’s blue-grey, yet tugging at bonds we need, The Gift is for all of us.

 

 

Assistant Director Su Young Shon, Costume Supervisor Ilaria Mosca, DSM Roisin Symes, ASM Emily Compton, Production Manager Andy Reader, Producer Andrew Keatley, Co-Producers Antony Eden, Rhiannon Handy

Published