Ex - A Play with Songs

Synopsis

An unlikely couple: Ruby is funny and gawkily attractive, Jack a bit of a scruff but cocky. When they were together she let him walk all over her, but now Ruby looks great, is full of confidence and has a new lover, Keith, who she is about to emigrate to America with. But will her feelings for Jack return when she decides to meet him one last time...

Our Review:

Andrew Girvan - 16 November 2011

Two's Company join Soho Theatre in bringing Rob Young (book and lyrics) and Ross Lorraine's (music) Ex - A Play with Songs to the stage. Also confusingly billed as a "shamelessly romantic British musical", it doesn't really matter as during this pedestrian affair any hint of emotion created during the songs is instantaneously abandoned when the lights come back up.

Although both have apparently moved on to pastures new, both Jack (Gerard Carey) and Ruby (Amy Booth-Steel) are still emotionally trapped in their short-lived relationship. Reunited in a bar, the pair must decide whether to throw away their super-human other halves: in Jack's case a leggy, blonde polyglot with a mortgage, in Ruby's a Canadian paediatric orthodontist who wants her to emigrate to the States.

But the central relationship is tepid, and although references to marriage, destiny, love and pain fill the book there is little emotional foundation. Most of the exchanges boi...

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Latest User Review

Grover - 27 November 2011:

I enjoyed the evening hugely as did the rest of the audience. Funny,entertaining,great characters and singing, what more could you want? A lot, according to some reviewers but don't be put off by them....

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