One Day When We Were Young

A last minute ticket got me into this sold out performance at the tiny Park 90 theatre.   This is a sweet but also bitter little story spread over 60 years about a romance that never really gets off the ground.  We first meet Leonard (Barney White) and Violet (Cassie Bradley) in 1942 in a hotel room in Bath where they have a stolen night together before Leonard joins the forces.  They are sweetly shy, but passionate and ambitious about their lives as they talk about waiting for each other and Leonard plans out their marriage after the war. 

We next meet Leonard and Violet in the sixties and then again in the early 2000s.  These later meetings become both bitter and sad, with Leonard seemingly stuck and still waiting whilst Violet gets on with living life. Written in 2011 by Nick Payne who also wrote We Live in Time, this is a small tale but deftly written and beautifully staged and performed showing the effects of time on them each time they meet.  

It's about opportunities taken and opportunities missed, and whilst Violet has been grabbing opportunities to live, Leonard has seemingly been missing them.  We learn a lot more about Violet than we do about Leonard over the course of the play and that is a bit sad too, as his life seems to be one never really lived.   Only 90 minutes long, the pace was still very slow and reflective. It isn’t packed with loads of emotional fireworks (although there are some actual sparklers) but it was beautifully sweet and sad. A poignant little tale of love and passing time, and what might have been, elevated by the performances of the two leads.