Cougar

by Rosie Lewenstein

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre Richmond on 2 March 2019

Chelsea Walker directs Charlotte Randle as Leila and Mike Noble as John in a new play in which Leila, an ambitious and successful woman lobbying big business to recognise and take action to mitigate climate change takes up with John, a young bartender whom she meets at a conference and takes around the world with her on the proviso that he does not demand too much of her or fall in love with her.

The escalating global crisis is a constant background to the difficult relationship between Leila and John: she is used to controlling all aspects of her life in the service of her job (which she sees as extremely valuable, and hence worthy of personal sacrifice) and perhaps is therefore fearful of too intimate a relationship at an emotional level (she is more than happy with physical intimacy); he is grateful for her attention and happy to experience the whirlwind of travel on offer, but also feels shut out and to some extent used. The imbalances of the personal encounter are perhaps not so very different from the more commonly examined situation of a powerful businessman whose wife or partner is meant only to function in the 'private' or 'domestic' sphere of his life; it's unusual and refreshing to watch a play where these stereotypical gender roles are, in effect, reversed. The problems arise, as they always do, from a perhaps chronic mismatch of priorities, and are dismayingly familiar.

The trajectory of Leila and John's relationships is mapped out in a series of anonymous hotel rooms, rendered for us in one generic space (brilliantly designed by Rosanna Vize and lit by Jess Bernberg) which does duty for any number of international convention centres. The play jumps around in time, giving a jarring sense that there is always a dangerous undercurrent of crisis even when things are happy and expansive on the surface. In the unforgiving intimacy of the Orange Tree the two actors manage the shifts of tone supported by sudden changes of lighting to indicate the change of venue, often after only a few brief phrases, and often returning to a scene already started some lighting cues before. 

The encroaching climate catastrophe is of course the constant preoccupation of Leila's job, but apart from a brief scene in which she rehearses a speech, we are not preached at on this subject. The two are often in hot and uncomfortable, and allegedly dangerous, places but on the whole it is left for us to decide whether extremes of climate are responsible for the increasingly erratic behaviour of Leila and John, or for the decreasing availability of creature comforts in the hotels. Only the stark appearance of a wild-eyed and bloodstained young man bringing them a piece of meat (he had previously appeared, also wordlessly, as a very suave waiter providing room service in a calmer time) indicates a more serious deterioration in the outside world.

Running for about eighty uninterrupted minutes, the play succeeds in covering a lot of ground in showing us the rocky and ultimately broken relationship between Leila and John; the intercut short scenes, though demanding a great deal of attention to follow, are nonetheless effective in giving us the sense of a truthful insight into two needy people who are not quite able to rise to the occasion the other demands. But perhaps the demands themselves are not fair; that question is left for us to consider.