Tickets were gifted in return for an honest review
Drifting couldn’t speak more directly to me, and yet I couldn’t feel less emotionally engaged with it. I left the theatre feeling let down by both the premise of the story and the mission of Ardent Theatre Company.
We follow a 26-year-old man who finally decides to leave his small village for the City. Emotional and practical constraints - from having only a tenner in his pocket to the emotional blackmail of his parents - make his choice a difficult one. Around him orbit the typical ghostly village figures: the young manager, the work colleague, the long-term girlfriend. They all seem content in a perpetual present, one that disturbs no one except our young protagonist, whose vague hopes and dreams stretch only as far as escaping afternoon cinema trips and shelf-stacking shifts.
Photo by Mark Douet
The storytelling, intentionally stagnant to mirror the stasis of rural life, ends up simply feeling dull and unengaging. The allegorical elements (a mist that obscures everything, a ladder he cannot climb) are amusing enough but never develop into anything substantial. The characters feel flat and two-dimensional, and the protagonist’s portrayal is particularly off. Though he’s meant to be 26, his speech patterns, reasoning, physicality, and costume (Harry-Potter-style glasses and a school backpack) make him seem at least ten years younger. By the end, when he returns for a visit, we finally see how the city has changed him and I found myself wishing that was where the story began.
Photo by Mark Douet
The ensemble is full of strong actors, but the writing and directing fail to capture the intensity of the emotions the piece should be grappling with: the rage, frustration, drive, and longing familiar to working-class creatives fighting to carve out their place in the world. Which brings me to a provocation: why not give the opportunity to a young writer or director to tell their own story? Ardent Theatre Company has done this before, so why not do it here - especially with a subject so rooted in lived experience? That version of Drifting might have been something far more compelling.
Drifting plays at Southwark Playhouse Borough until Saturday 22nd November. Tickets are available from https://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/productions/drifting/
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