Review for Inexperience – This ‘No Contact’ Romance Is Incredibly Poignant | stage

THere’s a clever conceit that lies behind Douglas Maxwell’s sexy romantic comedy. He imagines the possibility of continuing a sexually charged relationship without physical contact. This improbable idea is brought to life on stage, and it reaches two levels.

Two students meet at a twenty-first birthday party in 1995, one in law and the other in media studies, and agree to maintain the exciting anticipation of their first meeting by never touching each other. If they did, the relationship would end.

We see them every now and then, played by two sets of actors. The man, Robin Shelton, is loyal to their agreement and transforms from a clumsy by nature (Alexander Tate) to an ascetic by choice (Sandy Grierson). The emotionally repressed student we meet at the beginning becomes a master police officer, ruling the courts with a pedantic attention to detail—and living entirely for the job.

Meanwhile, the woman, Iris Rossi, forgets all about their arrangement and goes from spontaneous school dropout (Sophie Fortune) to lovable anarchic art writer (Adora Onashile). Thanks to her wayward participation in a climate paint-throwing campaign, she bumps into fifty-year-old Robin at the Sheriff Court.

On one level, the no-touch rule allows Maxwell to ask philosophical questions about human behavior. Can deferred gratification be better than intentional abandonment? Is self-denial a safer option than giving in to instinct? Or are mistakes what life is all about? As Iris says, without experience you cannot have wisdom.

Then, on the physical level, vanity presents a theatrical game. In Sally Reid’s excellently acted production, with Vicky Manderson as action director, the actors weave around Jessica Worrall’s elegant set with cat-and-mouse precision, getting close together but never touching. That is, of course, until they inevitably do, the play’s big question gets an indisputable answer and our hearts swell.

Maxwell writes with a keen sense of narrative structure, and deftly depicts the generational divide, with Tait and Fortune playing a series of young characters who try, and generally fail, to keep their adults on track. It’s funny, poignant, and messily human.