Not Now at Finborough Theatre

I love the programming that Finborough Theatre is doing at the moment and so I see most things that are on there and any shows that I miss are more down to a lack of time than to the particulars of the play.

In this case it helped that Not Now is written by David Ireland because I had seen a couple of his plays previously, at Finborough, and loved them.

I have a routine when going to Finborough but that was blown apart by a tube strike that day which meant that after a lot of walking and a couple of slow buses, my evening meal was a sandwich bought at a nearby Sainsbury's and eaten on the way. Still, despite everything, I got to the theatre not that long after 7pm and was able to claim a seat in the front row.

The premise of the play was simple, a young man in Northern Ireland is about to go to London for an acting audition (the play opens with the opening of Richard III) and he gets involved in a discussion with his uncle who wants to be helpful but isn't. That conversation soon veers off, as all conversations do, and soon covers the relative merits of Shakespeare and Stephen King, Irishness, The Troubles and being gay or not.

It's a normal conversation from which we learn much about the two men and their family. Some surprising secrets are exposed through the tensions between the two. But they are family and this is good natured stuff, each wants to explain their point of view and not just belittle the other's.

A pleasant surprise for me was that the uncle is played by Stephen Kennedy. The name meant nothing to me (to my shame) but I recognised the voice immediately because his real name is Ian Craig and he's the chef at Grey Gables in The Archers. He also appears to have gone to school in Strabane where my mother grew up and many of her family still live, and to be Actor-in-Residence at Kingston Grammar School which is just down the road from me and where my younger son went to school.

Matthew Blaney played the nephew and together the two actors gelled magnificently, they looked and sounded like a nephew and uncle having a normal if slightly awkward conversation.

Not Now was short, just under an hour, but packed so much into that time that it felt like a full evening at the theatre.

Finborough Theatre and Not Now was a perfect match and I am glad I was there to see it sparkle.