The search for perfection rarely leads to happiness. This truism comes home to roost in Frazier Bailey’s intriguing play Strangewife. It centres on feckless actor Sidney (Daniel Barney Newton), who’s hired by the grief-stricken Laura (Brooklyn Boukather) to play the part of her recently deceased fiancé, Bruce. Sidney is hardly a natural in the role: the first night he turns up tipsy, struggles to get into character and mistakes the situation for sexual roleplay. As the play briskly skips through days, then weeks, though, the pair find the easy rhythms of a long-term couple, but the closer Laura comes to resurrecting the person she lost, the further she seems to be from contentment.
Artifice is heavily evoked from the off by the staging, which features a complex three-camera setup that projects live images of the actors onto the wall behind them, allowing us to see their performances from myriad angles. It has the effect of turning the compact stage into a kaleidoscopic split screen as we watch Sidney inch closer to Laura’s ideal version of Bruce through rehearsal and repetition. Bailey has referenced Yorgos Lanthimos and Harold Pinter as key inspirations, and their influence is clear in Strangewife’s dark humour, its themes of power and control, and its embrace of unconventional relationships. However, the play never reaches either’s dark depths.
The performers impress, with Boukather particularly effective in her dual roles as the disturbed Laura and Sidney’s hedonistic girlfriend, Leah. And while the rushed finale doesn’t deliver the emotional punch promised by the setup, the strangeness and tenderness of this exploration of modern love will linger for days to come.
Strangewife, Assembly Rooms, until 23 Aug (not 13, 20), 7.45pm