By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***

WHEN?: Saturday 2 November and runs through 9 November 2024 RUNTIME: 70 minutes (without interval)

Dunster (pictured right above) is arguably best known for playing Mancunian striker with a heart Jamie Tartt in Apple’s brilliant comedy Ted Lasso and here shows his versatility as an unsympathetic newlywed who freezes during a plane hijack.

• Read on for reasons including how this is worth a look for its strong cast bringing more to an implausible script than it merits

So far so Force Majeure (Donmar Warehouse) as we discover his wife Anjana Vasan (Wicked Little Letters and A Streetcar Named Desire, Almeida) foiled the hijack and the pair cannot find peace afterwards as they struggle to come to terms with what was a honeymoon from hell.

It’s a thrill to be at such close quarters with such fine actors in this venue’s intimate 90-seater Jerwood Theatre Upstairs venue and it’s easy to see from our front row seat just how convincing Dunster and Vasan are as a couple whose house party meet cute involves them disagreeing on their glass half full/empty take on life and people.

The tiny venue has been reconfigured with 2 rows of benches on either side of its width with a slope through its floor signifying a plane’s corridor leading up to a door with a cockpit on the other side.

A special mention for designer Anna Reid and director Daniel Raggett who have created an innovative space which truly convinces as we fear the plane these newlyweds are on is about to crash as menacing hijacker Craige Els (Just For One Day, Old Vic) wrestles his way to the cockpit.

Our problem with Oli Forsyth’s Brace Brace is that it feels implausible. Would Vasan’s hijack heroine really discover on live TV that the man she stopped had been released because he had no memory of events and so couldn’t have planned them?

Or, as appears happens later, would he be detained for his own safety in a secure mental health unit? And yet Forsyth’s script keeps jumping the shark later appearing to offer the threat that he is nearby and may still pose a threat to Vasan’s character.

Despite that Vasan and Dunster make a believable couple and we do invest in their problem being that they can’t understand each other’s behaviour when they were thrown into a fight-or-die predicament.

Dunster has the tougher job to do because his character seems weak and unsupportive of Vasan’s more relatable subject of a media scrum.

Els has multiple roles and is particularly oily as the pilot seeking late redemption. Events had taken such a ridiculous turn we thought he’d make an even later return as the hijacker and even we weren’t prepared for quite how outrageous the final act would be.

Brace Brace is definitely worth a look for its strong cast in an intimate setting bringing more to an implausible script than it merits.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Royal Court Tickets
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