New writing at the ADC seems to elicit a sort of gung-ho all-in-it-together spirit from its audiences, particularly on the first night; such was the case with The Merrier, and the show more than delivered to a smallish but keen crowd. The play opens with twenty-something twins Patrick and Fran (Tom Stuchfield and Clara Strandhoj) preparing for an influx of guests, the former lurking sardonically around the drinks cabinet, and the latter swearing profusely at an uncooperative pear salad. “Don’t stress,” Patrick advises his sister “everybody already knows you can’t cook.” The Merrier looks set to be a wry and darkly funny dinner-party farce, and indeed so it proves to be, at least for the first 2 acts. Around the garden furniture table, then, we find dippy vegetarian priest (Ben Hawkins) who was once famous for masturbating, the smug couple who can’t keep their hands off one another (“Abercrombie and Bitch” Amber Dillon and a wonderfully smarmy Gus Mitchell), the singleton gamer who’s worried he has nothing to boast about 5 years after graduating (Ben Martineau) and sarcastic lesbian lawyer Helen. All this is only catalysed by the inconvenient presence of the twins’ 13 year-old sister Louise, brilliantly portrayed by a sulky Rachael Naylor, pyjama’d and pigtailed, and rather unsettlingly well-informed about puberty. 

The dialogue is original and cutting, delivered notably well by the glamorous and endlessly smoking Helena Fallstrom as Helen, and we get the sense that with a couple more years of practice writer/director Laura Batey will be at Thick of It levels of quick-fire wit. The cast deals well with the confusion of so many bodies onstage and multiple lines of conversation to keep track of, although a split-stage effect, alternating lines between scenes in the fore-stage garden and the dining room laid out behind, could be a little slicker. The conceit of a game of Sardines, though, was a good chance well-seized to make the most of comic entrances, physicality, and eaves-droppings, as well as expanding the core theme of the evening, utter, glorious, self-imposed awkwardness; at one moment of homoerotic tension/exposition, the chaplain blurts “Eurrhh… we can sort of, um, hear everything you’re saying” from under the dining table. 

But it’s when awkwardness develops beyond the usual “What have you all been doing for five years?” to serious matters, long-past but still unspoken, that we powerfully realise the real human hurt that may have passed between these now-disparate people. The three-dimensionality of formerly comic characters comes into its own as the tone changes and their history, of which I shouldn’t say too much (you’ll have to see for yourself), is revealed. Fran’s unexpectedly touching monologue, late on, nostalgically tells a sleepy Louise of the youthful pretensions and aspirations of the Devon Road House’s inhabitants, way back when. And the sense that we’re never satisfied as young people resonates, I suspect, with the student audience: even after uni “We didn’t use to be boring. We should be talking about our magical lives as graduates!” laments Fran during one of many attempts at organised fun, to which Patrick retorts “Fran, sit down. This isn’t how conversations work.”

A refreshing blend of wit, farce, nostalgia and genuine humanity combined with a shot of unambiguous drama, The Merrier is certainly something I’d recommend. Laura Batey, the girl done good.