Beginning is a quiet, unsettling study of modern loneliness that refuses to romanticise connection. Set in 2016, it presents two people who are not searching for love so much as negotiating the terms under which they might tolerate another human being. What lingers after the final moments is an unease that this is not an extreme portrait at all, merely a familiar one, especially for young people.
David Eldridge s writing distils contemporary relationships down to their most transactional elements: longing without language and a persistent sense that everyone involved is improvising adulthood without having been given the script. These are not people on the brink of romance, they are people circling the possibility of it, exhausted by the effort and desperately underconfident in themselves and their environment.
Direction, under Sean Baker, is the production’s greatest strength. The Corpus Playroom, with its corner stage and L-shaped audience split across two planes, is used with intelligence and intent. Characters move through the space, collapsing the distance between observer and subject. At times, actors deliver dialogue from offstage back to a lone figure waiting in the theatre space, a decision that powerfully externalises self-doubt and longing. The audience watches someone quite literally waiting to be chosen, suspended in emotional limbo.
James Inman’s performance as Danny is excellent. He moves effortlessly between awkward embarrassment, laddish humour, and flashes of anger at a society and an ex-wife that he feels have quietly discarded him. His performance never tips into caricature. Instead, it reveals a man painfully aware of his own inadequacies, oscillating between bravado and vulnerability. His sense of worthlessness is brutally clear, describing himself as little more than a monthly direct debit, a line that lands with uncomfortable force. It is authentic enough that the audience want to shake him and say “man up”, an observation made directly by his love interest, Laura, even when we as an audience know it is wrong to do so.
Izzy Rees portrays Laura with a cold detachment that feels deliberate but slightly underexplored. As a managing director, financially wealthy and shaped by trauma, there is rich psychological ground beneath the surface. While the restraint is effective and her frustration with Inman is palpable, there are moments where it could have been explored further; particularly given the imbalance of power between the two characters. The script gives Rees room to veer into maternal judgement, heightened by the innocence of Inman’s performance.
The play’s most devastating crystallisation comes in a moment of domestic intimacy. Laura lovingly prepares a fish finger sandwich for Danny, taking a bite herself. But a moment later she instructs him to eat with a disgusted impatience that cuts sharply. He complies, eating in silence like a chastened child, guiltily enjoying the food while exposing his lack of masculinity. It is shocking in its simplicity and profoundly moving. In that moment, the play stops circling its themes and delivers them whole. This is a man who wants to be loved and does not know how to ask for it. He will settle for the most meagre of gestures. You can almost hear the collective crumbling of the audience into sympathy.
Silence is wielded with remarkable confidence throughout Baker’s direction. Where many productions fear stillness, here it is used as a scalpel. Pauses stretch just long enough to force the audience to sit with the discomfort, to observe rather than be guided. It is a brave choice from both cast and director, and it pays off repeatedly, allowing meaning to emerge without exposition.
The set design convincingly evokes a London, upwardly mobile flat, complete with Penguin Classics posters and carefully chosen middle-class memorabilia. It is a space that signals taste, success and aspiration, while quietly underscoring emotional sterility. Lighting, however, is constrained by the space. The limitations of the venue lead to deep purples and reflective decorative elements that occasionally distract the eye, pulling focus away from the performances.
Beginning assumes an audience fluent in the language of modern dissatisfaction. It treats its viewers as digitally savvy, millennial or younger, and comfortable with the idea that career success often comes at the expense of traditional family structures. Yet Danny disrupts even that narrative. He has neither professional fulfilment nor familial stability, exposing the hollowness of the trade-offs the play interrogates. A significant number of young people were overheard in the foyer afterwards describing how much it resonated with them as being representative of their life.
This is not a comforting watch. It offers no neat resolutions and no redemptive arc. It simply holds up a mirror to modern dating and asks the audience to recognise themselves, or the people they have loved, in the silences and compromises on stage.
Beginning is a play for those navigating contemporary relationships, weighing trade-offs, and questioning what truly matters. It is for anyone who has experienced heartbreak and felt as though life delivers failure in an unbroken sequence. Beginning offers no catharsis and no moral resolution. Instead, it presents the slow normalisation of emotional compromise as a substitute for intimacy. For some, this is a comedy. I am left feeling thankful that I have not experienced such a quiet, ordinary tragedy.
Powerful work and a credit to the entire team, I would be excited to see what they do next.
Photos credit: Paul Ashley
