Brighton Fringe 2026
When Gary Left Annie (Almost)
Helen Pain and Paul Richards
Genre: Comedy, Fringe Theatre, New Writing, Radio Play, Theatre
Venue: Ironworks Studios
Festival: Brighton Fringe
Low Down
Helen Pain and Paul Richards write and perform this intimate two-hander about two very ordinary people navigating love, adulthood and couplehood – with self-awareness, sharp observation and a bit of dancing.
Review
A new romantic comedy about two gloriously ordinary people trying to make love, adulthood and couplehood work without completely losing themselves in the process.
I came in early because I wanted to catch that moment before a performance properly begins. So there was Paul Richards, casually chatting with the audience. Helen Pain is nearby, the two of them already establishing the couple’s world and welcoming us into their story. It immediately felt less like theatre and more like a gathering. Two armchairs and a computer on stage. A neon sign, mirrored walls, eclectic furniture – the production making little attempt to hide the mechanics of the space. The room was aggressively, unapologetically bright. My theatre brain started its inventory of complaints, and I kept waiting for the lights to dim. They never did.
Before the show started, he laughed: “It’s a new piece. It can go either way.”
Gary meets Annie on a bench.
Two very normal people meet and fall in love through their shared weirdness. He’s a bit strange, she’s perfect to him, and somehow they fit together beautifully in their little ordinary lives. What unfolds is not a fairy tale or some extraordinary cinematic romance. It’s recognisable, honest and beautifully observed.
The story follows the familiar stages of a relationship: the excitement of the beginning, the awkwardness of sharing space, and slowly becoming comfortable enough to both adore and irritate one another. The quiet panic of adulthood. The sudden immaturity triggered by a pregnancy scare. When Annie’s best friend gets married, they suddenly find themselves uncomfortably performing couplehood in front of everyone else. The tiny disappointments, fears and secret wishes that live inside every long-term relationship.
At times both characters quietly entertain the possibility of leaving each other for reasons that feel enormous in the moment and ridiculous later. Yet we root for them completely. Gary may believe Annie is a ten, but Annie slowly gives us all the reasons she loves him too. Somewhere in that vulnerability, the audience softens.
The characters are clearly built, and the writing itself is difficult to fault. Even when it occasionally feels familiar, it carries the comforting charm of a classic romantic comedy.
The actors also regularly acknowledged the audience directly, occasionally speaking to us or including us in the moment. Because the production never truly attempted to build a sealed-off imaginary world, breaking the fourth wall felt completely natural. At times it almost resembled stand-up in rhythm, perfectly matching the intimacy of the material. We weren’t observing. We were sharing the conversation with them. Pain and Richards also wrote the piece, and there is an ease to both performances that feels less performed than lived alongside for a long time.
The piece is partly written as a radio play – prerecorded conversations replaying memories, internal thoughts, outside perspectives. Some of these moments work beautifully, particularly when the characters react to each other’s unspoken thoughts. But the production occasionally leans too heavily on the recordings, and certain passages feel over-mimed or under-physicalised rather than fully inhabiting a theatrical world around it. The writing is vivid enough that you find yourself wanting either less prerecorded material, or a more specific physical language to meet it. That said, there are hints throughout of a stronger physical-comedy vocabulary emerging, and when those moments land, they greatly enhance the charm of the relationship.
The production also makes smart use of recurring physical choices associated with particular moments and emotions, especially the repeated use of dancing throughout the different stages of the relationship. At first the dancing is enchanted and eager. Then comfortable. Then slightly unexciting. Then distant and out of sync. And finally they somehow rediscover their own goofy rhythm again. It became a simple but effective physical reflection of how the relationship itself kept shifting over time.
By the end, the audience was clapping, cheering, laughing, and probably crying a little too. And somehow, fittingly for a play about connection, it genuinely felt like we had all briefly become part of their story.
