By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: *****

WHEN?: Saturday 8 February (matinee), opens 13 February and runs through 26 April 2025 RUNTIME: 140 minutes (with a 20-minute interval)

We’re at dinner with friends the night before we see this and they mention they caught it on its 1st preview.

• Read on for reasons including why this is hugely funny and the best new play of the year so far

My sister’s already seen it with her friends. It seems there is an expectation around it that we weren’t quite anticipating.

Author Mike Bartlett (Scandaltown, Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith) is perhaps best known for penning TV’s Doctor Foster although this frank and very funny 3-handed sex comedy reminded us more of his COCK (Ambassadors Theatre).

It opens with Walker’s (The Cane, Royal Court Theatre) teacher/poet Polly grinning ear to ear while hitting on Doherty’s (Best New Play monsta-winning Death Of England: The Plays, @SohoPlace) mature student Kate in a bar while simultaneously worrying about her duty of care.

Next, on a sofa with a champagne bottle close to hand, Polly celebrates her anniversary with husband Nick played by Stephen Mangan (Private Lives, Donmar Warehouse) while simultaneously berating each other for how bored sexually they are with each other.

It’s very funny with gags flying thick and fast and landing with this sell-out crowd particularly as Walker’s Polly imitates her husband’s straight male friend’s anticipated response to her suggestion that Kate becomes the 3rd, or unicorn, in their relationship.

We overhear a couple discussing what they’ve just seen at the interval and they talk about how this will spark conversations between people who would never previously have dreamed of broaching the topic.

We marvel at how Walker’s Polly and Doherty’s Kate have all the agency here and how the latter in particular convinces in a role requiring her to make up for her lack of years with an unexpected and over-abundant knowledge about life and broad-mindedness that puts her older contemporaries to shame.

We’re not big fans of Mangan’s because we think he generally plays the same character in everything we see him in but here he is out of his comfort zone while still making dad jokes and we believe him when he gets angry and loses his cool.

Our friends thought this best new play of the year so far’s denouement was predictable but we didn’t see it coming and although the 2nd half is no match for the peerless 1st this is hugely funny and provocative stuff.

In the programme director James Macdonald (Waiting For Godot, Theatre Royal Haymarket) talks about knowing he wanted to do it after reading 10 pages of the script.

We perhaps knew even earlier that this was dynamite material from a writer at the very top of his game and brought to vivid life by a cast capable of dropping devastating word bombs left, right and centre throughout. Incendiary.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Nimax Tickets
• Have you seen a Nicola Walker show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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