Blink begins with the announcement that it is ‘a true story… and a love story’. Neither of these statements is entirely accurate. What follows is some ‘rom’, some ‘com’, but also a bittersweet look at loneliness and grief.
The play centres on two damaged characters, Sophie and Jonah. Both have experienced sheltered childhoods, both have now lost a parent to pancreatic cancer – one of many coincidences. Both now find themselves lonely and struggling in London – upstairs and downstairs, to be precise. Jonah rents the flat below Sophie, though the two do not meet. When Sophie is let go from her job (HR report a ‘general perception’ that she ‘lacks visibility’) a desperate haze leads her to buy a web cam and send the screen or receiver to Jonah. An unusual voyeuristic bond develops between the two neighbours, who still do not meet, until a sudden incident brings them together in person.
The later stages of the play veer away from the expected outcome. The final scenes are the most moving and the most daring. Once boy has met girl, there is no Richard Curtis-like inevitability that they will be together. Two people out-of-step with the world cannot necessarily fix one another. Their happiness may be temporary, messy, sinister.
The joy of Blink lies in the dialogue. The script brims with charming details which reveal the characters' idiosyncrasies: the analogies Sophie draws between social situations and wearing braces, or the mangy fox that Jonah feeds each morning – Mr Scruffalitus. At times, the characters feel too kooky and the play becomes self-conscious. Certainly Blink belongs to a niche genre of twee two-handers, many of them favourites at the Fringe. Nevertheless, the quirks feel more natural and the ending more ambitious than the cinematic equivalent. For fresh takes on modern love, maybe we need to watch not indie-films but indie-theatre.