Ignorant comment – love of the ‘uncontacted’ is very touching | Theater

There are some great ideas for starting a romantic comedy by Douglas Maxwell. It imagines the possibility of a sexual relationship that can continue without contact. Played out on stage, this unlikely idea hits home on two levels.

Meeting at a 21st birthday party in 1995, two students – one law, one media studies – agree to hold on to the hope of meeting for the first time without any contact. If they do, the relationship will end.

We see them before and now, played by two groups of actors. The man, Robin Chilton, is true to their relationship and goes from gawky by nature (Alexander Tait) to a foreigner by choice (Sandy Grierson). The depressed student we meet at the beginning becomes a sheriff’s officer, judging the courts with great enthusiasm – and just being on the job.

Meanwhile, the woman, Iris Rossi, forgets all about her plans and goes from a random groupie (Sophie Fortune) to a chaotic occult writer (Adura Onashile). Because of his misbehavior and smear campaign, he faced fifty Robins in the sheriff’s court.

On one level, the no-touch rule allows Maxwell to ask intelligent questions about human behavior. Can delayed gratification be better than intentional abandonment? Is self-control better than giving in to instinct? Or mistakes are what life is all about? As Iris says, without knowledge you cannot have wisdom.

Then, on the physical level, the ego leads to the theater. In Sally Reid’s brilliant performance, Vicki Manderson as the movement director, the actors weave around Jessica Worrall in cat-and-mouse fashion, coming within a whisker of each other but not touching. That is, until he does, the central question of the play receives an irrefutable answer and our hearts swell.

Writing with a keen sense of storytelling, Maxwell deftly shows the generational divide, while Tait and Fortune play a series of young people trying, and often failing, to keep their elders safe. It’s funny, moving and disturbing.