The Habits at Hampstead Theatre – review

Jack Bradfield, who has made a name for himself as a promising director, focuses his debut play on the niche and nerdy world of Dungeons and Dragons (or D&D, to those in the know).

In the WarBoar games cafe in Bromley, three friends meet to play out their improvised quest, The Nightmare King. Teenager Jess (Ruby Stokes) is the youngest, but leads the game from a notebook that we’ll come to discover has a poignant significance.

Tensions soon become evident between the trio, particularly Maryn (Sara Hazemi), who has a high-flying graduate law job, and Jamie (Jamie Bisping), who flunked his interview at the local PC repair shop. What bonds them all, together with the 50-something cafe owner, Dennis (Paul Thornley), is a shared love of imaginative role play, each using it as a form of escape.

Struggling with grief or a gambling addiction? No matter, you can find balm in the company of dwarves, goblins and wizards, your character’s fate hinging on the roll of the dice. The play has great fun showing the details of D&D, with its unique combination of strategy game and charades. The characters adopt video game voices as their alter-egos, who have names like Gorthalax and Grimble, and navigate the increasingly convoluted world conjured by Jess.

Ed Madden’s energetic production is staged in-the-round in the Hampstead Downstairs, making for an immersive experience befitting a story so concerned with imaginative play. It’s evocatively – and melodramatically – soundscaped by Jess’s customised Spotify playlist (credit to sound designer Max Pappenheim for skilfully blurring the diegetic aspect). Alys Whitehead’s pared-down cafe set ensures focus remains on the fantasy realm, and Laura Howard offers up some increasingly cinematic lighting as the quest reaches its conclusion.

There are some strong performances, particularly from Stokes, who lends Jess a moving vulnerability as she clings to the escapism offered by the game, and Thornley as the paternalistic Dennis, with his motto “who knows what adventures await?”. There’s also an enjoyable turn from Debra Baker as the amusingly normative Bev, Dennis’s girlfriend who initially struggles to accept that D&D is a game on a par with Monopoly.

Not everything rings true, such as the sort-of romance established between Maryn and Jamie, and the play does suffer from getting bogged down in the expositional detail necessary to the playing of D&D. Though the subject may be original, as a narrative it’s pretty formulaic, and could lean in more to the sense of unpredictability offered up by the game it celebrates.

But Bradfield should be commended for shining a spotlight on a gaming subculture that has far more influence and artistry than is often acknowledged. And the final encounter with The Nightmare King, with Dennis dusting off his LARP (live action role-playing) dressing-up box, is pure joy. I look forward to his next adventure.