Burton Taylor

Wednesday 3rd, Friday 5th March 7.30pm; Saturday 6th March 2.30pm

“watching Toffee is like being catapulted headlong into the dank, philosophy-stained, Pot Noodle-encrusted, sluggishly beating heart of the Real Student Experience.” Madeline Wright ★★★★★

“When I saw it last night, I had the privileged position in the audience of knowing what was about to happen, when the jokes were coming and, more importantly, how the play had developed over the last three weeks.” Eluned Gramich ★★★★★

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Toffee ★★★★★

Written by Charlotte Geater

Review by Madeline Wright

Toffee is a play about students. Well, actually that doesn’t quite cover it: I’d like to explain that watching Toffee is like being catapulted headlong into the dank, philosophy-stained, Pot Noodle-encrusted, sluggishly beating heart of the Real Student Experience. And, despite how desperately unappealing that may sound, it was, in fact, very good and kind of damp-feeling, like sitting in a student room with a hole in the wall and knickers drying on a rack near the lukewarm radiator. It was all horribly redolent of my own experiences, so this reviewer gives it top marks for atmosphere.

The plot is fairly basic: wimpy, skinny-jeansed Alfie has managed to lose his girlfriend. His friends, her parents and the police don’t seem to care, so he’s taken it upon himself to do overtime on caring. He drifts miserably around the stage talking to the audience (who, in a nicely worked metatheatrical twist, become part of the play) and his friends about his feelings, clutching printed pictures of his girlfriend’s favourite places, and, most crucially in the quest to demonstrate ultimate anguish, lying on a beanbag whilst compulsively smoothing his hair over his forehead like a rodent cleaning itself.

As you might be able to tell, Toffee is also in classic student territory in terms of themes – there’s angst, loss and more introspection than an undergraduate class on Finnegans Wake. But it’s too smart, most of the time, to take much of this seriously, which led to some absolutely delightful downbeat humour; I’m thinking particularly of Nik Higgins who unquestionably stole the show as Jay, the doped-up, Playboy-indulging deliverer of all the most brilliant, banal undercutting of the more cringeworthy flights of fancy. I liked his trainers, too.

I couldn’t help feeling, however, that some problems occurred when the direction seemed unclear –there were definitely times when the play didn’t seem to be sure if it wanted to take itself seriously or send the whole studenty thing up. As I’ve said, the overall impulse was rewardingly towards the sardonic and downbeat, but there were a couple of iffy moments when Alfie was allowed to pontificate just a little too long about how, like, this THING had just got too BIG and we were all part of, like, a REALITY. Or something.

Anyway, it was rather less profound than groanworthy, and when one of the other, previously less annoying characters started spouting the same old knackers I did start getting a little edgy. And I have to admit that I was disappointed by the ending – its sudden dip into Deep Profundity (with even Jay becoming Meaningful) felt forced and out of key with the otherwise sharp and well-judged tone of the play.

Although I had to filter out Alfie’s worst excesses and overlook some of the dodgily earnest bits, I nevertheless found Toffee generally well-written, dry and funny in the same sort of vein as ‘Withnail and I’, so I’m definitely expecting good things in future from this writer. It may be flawed in places, but overall it’s definitely a compelling production that’s well worth watching.

Now, I’m off for a Pot Noodle.

Toffee ★★★★★

Review by Eluned Gramich

I have been following ‘Toffee’ from press preview to rehearsal, and then to the stage. When I saw it last night, I had the privileged position in the audience of knowing what was about to happen, when the jokes were coming and, more importantly, how the play had developed over the last three weeks.

The play focuses on the lovelorn student Alfie whose girlfriend has disappeared from his life. The play is very compact, having only four actors, all of which remain within the same student rooms. The subject, too, is compact. Rarely is anything else touched upon but Alfie’s mysterious girlfriend. What struck me first was the difference scene-setting actually made to the play: the introduction of a bed (something that was missing from rehearsals) was a welcome improvement. Suddenly, the entire play made more sense. I felt as if I was, like Jay (Nik Higgins), a friend of the characters, a student, lounging around on bean bags and other people’s beds, talking about relationships, weed and dropping-out. The props moved the action closer to the audience, creating a world of immediate and sharp realism for the students amongst us. The actors mingled ‘in-character’ with the audience before the beginning of the play, instructing us to take our seats while complaining about ‘whining Alfie’. It was a thoughtful and comic addition, but I had the feeling that what Chris (Rory O’Keeffe) was saying was only understandable to me, since I had seen the play. All the same, for a moment I did feel as if I was going upstairs to see old friends, rather than a carefully-planned and directed show. Other successful changes included the exchanging of a board of photographs depicting the lost girlfriend’s favourite places for a collection of printed-photos: this seemed a lot less cumbersome than the last stage-direction. And I was happy to see that they had reinserted what had been suggested was too crude a line: a line which got a good laugh from the audience.

And yet, unlike the press preview and even the rehearsals, the performance of Toffee was (inexplicably) less funny than the ones I had seen before. Many of the jokes fell flat, and I had the sense that the actors were simply reading out a script that they knew too well. They had lost the passion that they had for the play, and had given up on acting, relying on the informal and chatty script to get them through. All the same, the play is clever and witty, conjuring up student life completely and faithfully. After all, aren’t we all scared that our friends and loved ones at Uni will drop-out? What happens after Uni? Will we ever see them again? Toffee raises these issues by showing what a fragile social network University actually is, and (I am speaking now as a finalist) showing us that we are not alone in fearing the loss of these friendships.