Problematic Polyamory!
“You’re the man she’s chosen as her life partner. This is like having sex with Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.”
Kate
Mike Bartlett’s new play Unicorn is about polyamory, a break with the monogamous partnership that most family units are, or were, based upon. Polly (Nicola Walker) has a good job teaching in a university, poetry is her subject and she is a published poet. She is married to Nick a doctor (Stephen Mangan) and they have two children but the sexual side of their marriage is stale and unfulfilling.
One of Polly’s students in her late twenties is Kate (Erin Doherty) and Polly is very attracted to her. Now unlike adultery or even open marriages, polyamory is bound by ethical honesty. There is no cheating, no secret affairs, no infidelity but frank and detailed discussion about who, and how an extra person can be brought into a monogamous partnership to create the awkwardly named throuple for sexual exploration.
The third person is often a bisexual woman called a unicorn for her rarity. Kate is fascinated by language, by words, which she finds in conversation with her lecturer. Polly is feeling middle aged and is attracted to Kate’s freshness of spirit and youth. Stephen discusses it with Polly and he agrees to meet Kate to explore a polyamorous outcome. He finds the younger woman attractive.
Miriam Buether’s set has chairs or a sofa and finally a bed, sitting in a dome which gets darker and is filled with shadows as the play progresses.
Mike Bartlett’s writing is full of witty and quirky incongruity and the auditorium is full of laughter as each actor tries on the emerging partnership. Stephen Mangan and Nicola Walker played in the television series The Split and have good chemistry acting together although each is bored with the other in this marriage. Maybe to get away from her persona in The Crown as the young Princess Anne, Erin Doherty employs an Estuary English accent which is at odds with how Polly and Nick sound.
Despite their careful preparation, the throuple plans do not initially materialise and instead there is a situation where one person cheats and lies and the married couple split up. A few years later, another opportunity is revealed.
I’m not sure whether it is the endless planning or detailed talking about the ramifications of bringing the unicorn into their marriage but the very wordiness wearies us and robs us of the sexual frisson, the excitement and sexiness of the devolved relationship. They discuss alternate strategies like sex therapy or couples therapy designed to re-invigorate their marriage but instead fall into the infidelity model.
There is a delightful moment when Polly and Nick’s son introduces Kate to his teacher as my mother’s girlfriend and my father’s girlfriend and the teacher does a double take. Thinking about the rewritten books for primary children, like Lucy Has Two Daddies what will the polyamorous titles be: Lucy has Two Mummies and a Daddy?
Editor of TheatreVibe.co.uk
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Production Notes
Unicorn
Written by Mike Bartlett
Directed by James Macdonald
Cast
Starring:
Nicola Walker
Stephen Mangan
Erin Doherty
Creatives
Director: James Macdonald
Designer: Miriam Buether
Lighting Designer: Natasha Chivers
Sound Designer: Paul Groothuis
Information
Running Time: Two hours 20 minutes including an interval
Booking to 25th April 2025
Theatre:
Garrick Theatre
2 Charing Cross Road
London WC2H 0HH
Phone: 0330 333 4811
Rail/Tube: Charing Cross
Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge
at the Garrick Theatre, on 13th February 2025
