'The Company of Strangers'

This new dark comedy, by Carol Bunyan, opened at The Courtyard Theatre last night. Socially perceptive and genuinely funny the production should not be missed. 5/5

Ken (Derek Wright) and Matron (Imogen Bain)

Carol Bunyan’s ‘The Company of Strangers’ is a dark comedy of conflict ingeniously set in the forgotten isolation of a retirement home. Such a setting provides a perfect environment for Bunyan’s merciless humour while forcing us to stare, face to face, at the repressed reality of life and death.

Nick (Alan Charlesworth) is a dedicated but overly enthusiastic nurse at The Restmore Nursing home. His life revolves around envisaging ever more ridiculous games to entertain the tired and bemused patients. His booming opening soliloquy addresses the audience as if they were patients, immediately immersing the audience into the home’s bleak atmosphere, wonderfully complemented by the immediately recognisable stage design.

The part of Nick was written specifically for Charlesworth and you can see why. His amazingly malleable facial expressions and bulging eyes are enough to inspire amusement. But what grabs hold is an immediate sense of the underlying motives that fuel the constant distraction of his endless, idiotic games. In sudden recollections, sparked by clever language associations, we learn of his terrible guilt over the death of a young boy while he worked in a casualty ward. Nick spends eight years attempting to gain access to ‘his file’, terrified of the potential accusations it contains.

Nick’s relations with the ward’s Matron (Imogen Bain) revolve around typical workplace politics. She is desperately searching for love, dishonestly marketing herself as a 12 stone, chess-playing gym enthusiast, in a hilarious satire of online dating. There is a brilliant physical comedy to her performance as she enthusiastically runs for the phone whenever it rings and regresses to a giggling teenage self as she flirts with her blind date.  Again, this ridicule is balanced with a sympathetic humanity: she confesses ‘why not me? Make him love me.’

Driving the plot forward is the conflict between the home’s employees and a pair of teenagers arriving on work experience. Matt (Aaron Mwale) and Suzy (Rebecca Farrell) initially view their time as just that; ‘we’re only work experience.’ Offering a young and fresh perspective, they come to bond with the residents, such as Ken (played brilliantly by Derek Wright) whose deafness ‘is like being on a different planet.’ While the duo remain haunted by the memory of serving ‘custard’ to the residents, unlikely parallels emerge as empathy bridges the generation gap, revealing shared understanding. 

The cruelty of institutionalism is mirrored from school to retirement home as Nick remembers poignantly his treatment by school bullies. Bunyan gradually reveals the hidden anxieties of each character in turn. We learn how the Matron and Nick both live in constant fear of rejection. Another parallel is in the idea of defining identity. The Matron’s online profile creates an external ‘self’, mirroring the threatening power of Nick’s ‘file’ suggesting, as Matt articulates, ‘the power of information.’  

What makes Bunyan’s play so rewarding is its confidence, both in its unrelenting humour and willingness to explore universal human issues in clever and subtle dialogue. The retirement home functions as a microcosm of a British society ruled by conflict. Politics, class, race, gender, sex and identity are as potent as ever and, because of its isolated setting, operate more visibly. ‘The Company of Strangers’ manages to provide constant entertainment, social satire and potential redemption through empathy, kindness and care.  Bunyan’s play is both slapstick and tragically real, revealing the shared human fears and desires that connect us all. The play ends with Nick offering the audience an ominous reminder: ‘all of you…we’ll be waiting for you.’