Theatre review: The Head of the Fork

THERE’S a heap of promise in this new play by Jonathan Ponting, 22, about the point we all reach at the beginning of our adult lives when the sense of infinite possibility seems at once fantastically liberating and completely terrifying.

BEDLAM THEATRE (VENUE 49)

Ponting is Fred, a just-graduated drifter, paralysed with indecision at life’s big crossroads; Edward Eales-White is his flatmate, Dom – sensible, gainfully employed, getting on in the world and driven almost to distraction by his friend’s apparently terminal inertia.

The pair make an excellent double act, Ponting’s Fred remaining amusingly unmoving and unmoved on the sofa in their messy flat while Eales-White’s nicely realised Dom fusses and fumes around him, desperately trying to provoke him into some sort of meaningful action.

As with any good tragedy, the situation is hopeless, but the end avoids mawkish sentimentality. There’s even a hint that what seems like a sad outcome may be something the pair come to recognise as a blessing in disguise, five or ten years down the line.

Until today, 11:30am.