REVIEW: PRETEND by Jess Kambitsis at Lion and Unicorn Theatre 13 – 17 May 2025
‘A writer and a company to watch’ ★★★★
Actors spend their professional lives pretending, wearing clothes that aren’t theirs, saying words they don’t mean, feeling emotions that are someone else’s. And the premise of Pretend, a sharp, funny and whirlwind, look backstage during the run of a show is that they may spend the rest of their lives dodging or hiding from reality, too.
Four characters living their best lives – a six-week run of a successful play after, at least for two or three of them, months of slogging through auditions without much work. We’re backstage in a set of dressing tables and imaginary mirrors, usually as the quartet remove make-up at the end of a show (some triumphs, some those nights when it hasn’t quite gone so well), and rapid-fire short scenes take us through the six weeks of the run, illuminating the lives of the four actors.
The writing’s pin-sharp, capturing well the vibe that comes from making a show – the intensity and closeness of relationships, even friendships, that proximity and teamwork will require for the play’s run among people who may never work, or even meet again, once it’s over.
Sophy’s the star, slightly apart from the others both in leading the show and in reserving the crises of her life rather than sharing them until she has to – the break-up with the man (a man also setting her apart), the break-up sex, the pregnancy and abortion that follow. Cat and Milly are in a relationship, but it’s more fragile than Cat knows, since Milly’s also seeing Emma, and since Cat sees Milly as a privileged nepo-child and Milly thinks Cat’s colour has helped her be the most consistently employed of them all. Emma, meanwhile, has to hide from Cat her affair with Milly, even as Cat shows her the wedding ring she’s planning to spring on closing night.
It's Emma who gets the speech paraphrased in the opening para of this review, and it’s one of many quotable sets of lines from Jess Kambitsis’ superb script, a work, it’s surprising to find, is from a debut writer. The ending’s over-melodramatic, and taking it offstage seems an odd dramatic choice, but otherwise the play’s short running time packs far more than might be expected into scenes, that less well written might seem to skate over surfaces.
The performances are strong (a great ensemble performance), although the rapidity of delivery means some lines are covered or lost way upstage. An opening night 39 minutes against an advertised 60 also felt like something may have gone missing (who did have Milly’s ear-rings, did they enjoy the much-discussed dauphinoise potatoes?), and even if it didn’t there’s room to expand this further and breathe a little more between revelations.
In all, though, a substantial achievement in creating in such a short space four very real and distinct lives and making us care deeply about them. A writer and a company to watch.
PRETEND by Jess Kambitsis at Lion and Unicorn Theatre 13 – 17 May 2025
Directed by Lucinda Freeburn
Presented by Dawn Train Theatre
Box Office: https://www.thelionandunicorntheatre.com/whats-on
Reviewer David Weir’s plays include Confessional (Oran Mor, Glasgow) and Better Together (Jack Studio, Brockley, London). Those and others performed across Scotland, Wales and England, and in Australia, Canada, Switzerland and Belgium. Awards include Write Now Festival prize, Constance Cox award, SCDA best depiction of Scottish life, and twice Bruntwood longlisted.
