Review of Loft Theatre Company production of Honour (2011)

Playwright Joanna Murray-Smith rightly says she is telling a story that has been told a million times before. Middle-aged man tires of long, staid marriage and turns to glamorous younger woman.

Yes, it’s the eternal triangle again. Unfortunately, the ‘eternal’ also relates to the play which, far from offering the purported new approach, churns out in what feels like an endless sitting just about every platitude you might associate with the theme And, most unwisely, the writer even allows a character the truest line in the play: ‘We’re just one more cliché...’

Love, we are told, is a mixture of pain and pleasure. Loyalty within a marriage is defined as resistance to change. Does intimacy within same marathon marriage cloud knowledge of real sexual pleasure? So it goes on, and we have seen it all a million times before and generally a million times better.

What doesn’t help, alas, is weakness in casting. Edward Gildea has moments when he brings the straying George to life but for most of the time performs with the fidgety irritation of someone who can’t find his glasses. And as the supergirl journalist, Maia Corbett’s performance lacks the degree of maturity essential to this ice-cool femme fatale. It’s left to Mary MacDonald to find a measure of dignity in the general melee. This she does admirably, achieving the betrayed wife’s credible progression from hurt through anger to eventual acceptance and participation in a new order of life.

But the fact remains that all concerned are up against a script which is as patronising as it is naive.

The good news for the Loft is that after this season opener, things can only get better.

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Peter McGarry is an experienced, independent professional theatre critic who has agreed to review Loft Theatre Company productions.

The agreement with the Loft is that Peter is free to express his opinions for good or ill. The Loft Theatre Company has no control whatsoever over the content of these reviews and will never comment publicly on what he writes.