The Retreat at Finborough Theatre

Finborough Theatre has been doing quite a few foreign plays lately and that suits me well as I like to learn about different cultures and to hear from different perspectives. The Retreat is by Canadian writer Jason Sherman who Finborough Theatre had called upon before.

I liked the simplicity of the premise, a writer's retreat, and the simplicity of the production, just three main characters, and I was easily parted with £23 for an unreserved seat.

The preliminaries were so standard that the server at Cafe de Coin knew what my order was as soon as I walked in. Fed and watered I made my way to Finborough in time to bag a seat in the front row.

I liked The Retreat from the start as the characters were engaging and the premise was interesting. In the centre of it all was a young inspiring female writer and and older established male writer looking to move away from low-brow success to do something more worthy, next to them was the writer's partner who put success (money) first and beyond that was the young woman's father.

Very quickly there was a lot going on and that is why I loved the play so much. We had the developing relationship between the two writers, things about Jewish culture that were interesting philosophically but which I did not fully understand, an examination of what is meant by "home", and the gradual exposure of what had gone before and which had helped lead to today.

It was riveting and highly entertaining stuff and that was helped immeasurably by strong performances from all three main actors, Jill Winternitz, Max Rinehart and Michael Feldsher. Jonathan Tafler was good too, as the father, but his role was less prominent. This was a play about people and it needed the good actors that it got.

The Retreat was another example of what Finborough Theatre does best.