One Day When We Were Young

by Nick Payne

seen at the Park Theatre, Finsbury Park, on 13 March 2025 

James Haddrell directs Cassie Bradley as Violet and Barney White as Leonard in Nick Payne's 2011 play about two people set to share their lives together in 1942, but who, it turns out, don't. It is presented in the Park Theatre's smaller auditorium (Park 90), configured for this production as a square in which the audience is on two sides with a smaller square as the acting space in the corner.

Unlike his dazzling Constellations (which I have seen with five different casts - see reviews in June 2015, July 2021 and August 2021), this play's three scenes are presented in chronological order and without bewildering repetitions: war-time Bath in 1942; Bath again in the 1960s where Violet lives; and Luton in 2002 where Leonard lives. Despite these leaps across the decades and a running time of only 80 minutes the shape of these two lives, so hopefully united amid the anxieties of war and of first love at the start, and so divergent afterwards, is convincingly revealed through mannerisms, accents, trivial topics of conversation, and understated but effective signs of ageing.

Everything - even the scene changes - is down to the two actors, who give wonderful performances. In 1942 Violet and Leonard are spending a night together - their first it would seem - in a hotel room, each having presented excuses at home in advance as to why they might be spending the night away. There are nerves and uncertainties, but a firm belief in them both that they will get married when Leonard returns from war service.

But in the 1960s it is immediately apparent that the promises have not been kept: Violet is married with two children while Leonard, visiting Bath to see her in the hopes that she will attend his mother's funeral, is evidently single and still desperately hurt at this turn of events, even though it must have happened years before (the older child is sixteen). It becomes clear that the complete lack of news about Leonard's fate as a POW of the Japanese had proved too much for Violet. Though this scene could so easily have become the prelude to an illicit affair, Violet firmly quashes the possibility, refusing to compromise a marriage in which she is happy.

But forty years further on Violet is widowed and visiting Leonard in Luton at his invitation; she has written a book, and he, seeing an article about it and her in a magazine in the doctor's surgery, has got in touch. Yet their conversation is incredibly stilted, and it may even be that he is in the early stages of dementia, judging by some tell-tale conversational tricks and an inability to wield a fancy bottle-opener. Violet too is apprehensive, particularly as her daughter had advised her not to take up the invitation (apparently it was the first she knew of Leonard's existence). They might just be getting beyond this awkwardness when the play wisely finishes.

What struck me as particularly clever was the revelation of essentially ordinary and unpretentious lives having been lived across the years, mainly delivered through inconsequential small talk which was somehow still freighted with emotional weight because of that intense first encounter in 1942. Violet as a wife and mother talks about new domestic appliances and the transformation of the high street with the coming of supermarkets (the grocery shop where she worked as a girl, and where she presumably met Leonard, has closed). A trip to London with girlfriends, and a first amazed experience of espresso coffee there, is a recent highlight. It's well to recall that these really were great events in many people's lives at the time.

Later, Leonard, unwell and single in Luton, expatiates on the tribunal which had to decide whether Jaffa cakes were in facts biscuits or cakes: if biscuits they would incur VAT; if cakes they would be VAT exempt. This too acts as a time indicator (the question arose in 1991), but also perfectly reveals his character, someone keeping abreast of things that impinge on his daily life and budgeting, but verging on being something of a pub bore. Perhaps this particular hobby-horse also relates to his background in shop trading (he was a butcher as a young man before joining up).

Such conversational gambits could seem sentimental, contrived or condescending, but Cassie Bradley and Barney White are able to inhabit their roles so completely that everything they do and say is plausible and at times extremely poignant. Even their shuffling gaits and the hunches of old age, so perilous for young actors to adopt, are compelling: it was quite surprising to see them stand straight again for the 'curtain call' (there is of course no curtain in this small acting space).