Spinach

Synopsis

Imagine waking up, but you’re not in your bed. Imagine waking up, realizing you’ve been drugged and you’re tied to a stranger... a stranger you can’t see. Neither of you knows how you got there and neither of you knows how to escape. Tom and Kate can’t remember a thing.... not about the last few days anyway. Everything is a total blank, except for a halloumi kebab and a double-decker bus. As piece by piece they unravel their memories, each step brings them closer to knowing their captors, closer to their terrifying fate… and closer to each other.

Our Review:

5 March 2011

Compassionate journalist Kate (Jenny Platt) and chemist/dateless wonder Tom (David Hunter) wake tied together and without memory. An unlikely romance blossoms as they try to determine the origins of their predicament.
 
All of the dialogue in Spinach is set to music by Simon Waters. This might sound like a gimmick but actually works really well. The chemistry between Platt and Hunter as the bickering mis-matched couple is reflected in a jaunty, romantic piano. However, the conspiracy theory in which they are enmeshed by writer/director Janine Waters needs a more melodramatic sound.

She also builds in elements of social concern that leads to the only song that that could stand-alone from the play. This is a dance number in which a marvellously straight -faced Liz Singleton and Craig Whittaker make clear society’s indifference to those in need. All of the cast sing well although Hunter and Whittaker occasi...

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Latest User Review

Peter Markham - 14 March 2011:

Finally, The Royal Exchange joins the new decade with something a bit post-modern. They do classics very well - Private Lives - and new strong worthy stuff like Mogadishu, but mixing genres in our sampling age has so far eluded them. I went back and saw this again on my own!...

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