Rotterdam at the Arts Theatre

I saw it and loved it too! I found all the characters to be really dislikeable but I enjoyed the plot and the staging/delivery.

I saw it on Monday and really enjoyed it too. I help to lead an LGBT employee resource group at my work so consider myself fairly knowledgeable on this sort of stuff, but I learnt a LOT. I've recommended it to my colleagues.

There was a lot of empty seats, and I really hope that word of mouth helps this show out a bit. This is really something that people need educating on, and this is a perfect time with London gearing up for Pride.

One thing that did annoy me was when walking in there was someone complaining to her friend that the ladies toilet had been changed to be gender neutral and was saying she 'didn't want to go in there if there might be men in there''. I hope she learnt something by the end of the play too!

I saw it last time it transferred, i.e. not at Theatre 503 but at Trafalgar Studios 2, so I won't go again and I think there may have been some cast changes, but it was certainly different, thought-provoking and well worth seeing.

Finally saw this Thursday night. I laughed, I cried, I loved it. It's a compassionate joy, a sitcom whose situations and characters feel utterly real.

Some spoilers follow. . .

The premise felt like a sitcom: a lesbian, who doesn't fancy men, has a partner transitioning to a man. God alone knows what exactly Ray Cooney would have done with that, but this play does the opposite, committing fully to the situation, truth and feelings of the characters before anything else. The comedy that flows is a product of these unique and beautiful situations and characters.

Once upon a time, this sitcom would have starred Tamsin Greig, as the nervy, diffident, neurotic, hesitant lead character, Alice. One of the joys of this production is watching Alice McCarthy slither perfectly into Greig's mantle, fully inhabiting the trademarked, boggle-eyed, confused, frozen existential angst that Greig so perfectly brought to every sitcom she ever did.

As the woman Alice fell for, and the man that Alice feels a whole lot less for, Anna Martine Freeman's transgender character, Fiona/Adrian is beautifully realised, her excitement at becoming a man blinding her to the lack of excitement in her partner.

In support, Ed Eales-White is the soul of supportive cis decency, and Ellie Morris is outstanding as Lelani, the impulsive exuberant young Dutch girl who takes a fancy to Alice.

To digress, I give particular credit to Morris, as her shy stuttering Lucy, in "Peter Pan Goes Wrong" underwhelmed me. What I now realise is that her Lucy was the victim of Mischief Theatre's relentless writing and re-writing of their plays, identified so usefully for us on this board by Dawnstar. When I saw Daisy Waterstone originate the role at the Pleasance Theatre, Lucy's shyness was SO exaggerated, her stuttering SO pervasive, her meekness SUCH a plot point, that she was one of the greatest drivers of laughs in the whole show. By the time "Peter Pan Goes Wrong" played the Apollo, the part was less shy, less stuttering, with vastly less stage time, while the Mischief principals had vastly increased the stage time of their own roles, by comparison. So I was disappointed with the decrease in laughs I got from the character of Lucy.

But in this show, Morris is a force of nature, offering an effervescent performance of a wild and crazy dutch girl, embodying a role that functions the way Italy used to, in period dramas, a catalyst for repressed English people to emerge from their shells. Everything about Morris' ecstatic Lelani delightfully sparks the fires beneath McCarthy's Tamsin-Grieg-esque frozenness. Morris' eyes widen and widen and widen still further, as if on cocaine-fuelled stalks, her body bounces, and a febrile energy fills the room whenever she is onstage, meaning that every scene she is in is playful and exciting to watch. A splendid buoyant supporting performance, that lifts the whole production.

The sensitivity with which the plot is worked out is spot on. Only the faintly scented lingering whiff of sitcom and setup prevents me from giving this the full five stars. 4 and a half stars.