Lost Atoms
If you staged it as a radio play, Anna Jordan’s Lost Atoms would be a skilled but conventional story of a relationship, from meet cute through to heavily foreshadowed breakup.
And as a piece of new writing, you do have to judge it as that play. And it’s not bad! Is it plausible that edgy party girl Jess (Hannah Sinclair Robinson) and aggressively square Robbie (Joe Layton) would become a couple? Maybe, or if they wouldn’t in IRL we know what Jordan means by their relationship. They both represent something the other is lacking: for her, he represents solidity, reliability, stability; for him, she’s the passion and vulnerability lacking.
There’s a gripping plausibility to their halting progress and their frequent roadbumps: her flakiness and his uptightness make difficult bedfollows. Neither of them is capable of changing who they are. But they like each other enough to give it a good try, and for a while it works, taking them through marathon sex sessions, meeting each other’s parents, pregnancy, and even a trip to Grimsby. Gravity, though, is always pulling them a certain way, and frequent flash forward scenes indicate from the start that they don’t, as a couple, go the distance.
When I say gravity is pulling them: I mean that more metaphorically than literally. Physically, they actually seem to defy gravity. That’s because Lost Atoms comes from the veteran physical theatre company Frantic Assembly – who celebrate their thirtieth anniversary this year – and company boss...