Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Seating Plan
Currie Productions in association with Fools and Thieves
Genre: Comedic, Contemporary, New Writing, Theatre
Venue: Nip at Gilded Balloon
Festival: Edinburgh Fringe
Low Down
An Ephron-esque homage to romcoms, this play explores the lives of two twentysomethings in a series of vignettes, meeting year after year at the same mutual friend’s birthday party.
Review
A cosmopolitan tale, Izzy Radford’s debut play, Seating Plan, would fit right at home along the countless Sex and the City and Girls-esque dramas popular on any girls’ night in. At one point, Nora Ephron is namedropped, and it is to her that this play is clearly a homage. Instead of Harry and Sally, though, this play stars Mavis (Izzy Radford) and David (George Airey) as the will-they won’t-they pairing, seated together at a mutual friend’s twenty-fifth birthday party where neither of them know anyone else.
First impressions are formed, reputations are soured, and judgements are made as the two hit it off rather on the wrong foot, with Mavis arriving late as she’s been “watching an alien landing in Woking”, and David repeatedly batting off her several attempts to start something more than a friendship. The years then fast forward, with this story being presented as a series of vignettes, each at the same party, where, for one reason or another, David and Mavis always find themselves sat together year after year. A play about fate, crossed paths, and missed opportunities, it captures the ups and downs of trying to navigate your life in your late twenties.
Radford’s dialogue is well-crafted, reminiscent of the romcoms that she so clearly favours, and the scene transitions were seamless, with the time jumps feeling considerably smooth and defined. Both Airey and Radford delivered an assured professional performance, especially as in this performance they suffered from significant noise pollution from an adjacent show. The painful audience interaction even worked as part of the show’s charm, with David’s repeated attempts to chide a reaction from several members of the front row only intensifying the joke.
The characters change from year to year, each having their ups and downs, something reflected well in the sound design of the show. In terms of characterization, however, I wasn’t quite convinced by the character trajectory, particularly in Mavis, who’s character arc never really seems to join up conclusively from the ending to the girl we meet in the first moments. I think her character would benefit from a more coherent development, as she almost seems an entirely different character from the start – sometimes you just have to embrace the weirdness in a girl.
Overall, though, Seating Plan is a good play, with impressive performances by both Radford and Airey in this neat little two-hander. Billed as “One Day meets Sliding Doors with a dash of Julia Davis’s Nighty Night,” it’s certainly entertaining for any romcom lover.
