Simon Ward reviews We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it: and I guess that’s now at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre

Sometimes playwrights decide to lean into the idea of Fringe and give their work a title such as this one that could never grace a West End billboard, simply on the grounds that it wouldn’t fit. In spite of its unwieldy title, Nicola Lanthier-Rogers, whose play is premiering here, directed by Kay Brattan, has written an elegant two hander which is exceptionally well performed by Heather Jones (El) and Stanley Eldridge (Tophe). However, its meaning utterly eluded me. I include the character names from the programme, by the way, although to the best of my recollection we don’t hear either name uttered over the play’s seventy-five minute running time. Mysterious enough names in themselves, and still more mysterious are the characters’ motivations.

Tophe appears to be God, or perhaps, a god, who has decided that the world and everything in it must come to an end. For that reason, he has a rustic-looking firepit in front of him (design by Valentina Turtur) into which various bits of detritus are desultorily thrown from time to time. There is a rather pleasing ‘whoosh’ of flame and flash of light as each item is engulfed – credit for that should perhaps be shared between Valentina Turtur and stage manager Harri Compton. El soon bursts in to irritate and provoke Tophe – it appears their relationship goes back a long way, maybe even forever. She is also a god, or maybe a devil. In any case the two are at bickering odds. To support the devil hypothesis, there are suggestions that she has intervened and caused chaos at various points in history, but there is no great revelatory moment. For his part, Tophe seems more resigned than particularly angry that it has come to this, even as it emerges that the end of everything will mean the end for the two of them as well. It occurred to me that if El were the Devil, wouldn’t God’s imminent demise be a moment for rejoicing and possible evil triumphalism? Instead she seems to meekly defer to his demand that they both expire together.

Lanthier-Rogers has an enormous amount of faith in her audience. Far from spoonfeeding plot points, we have to take scraps of meaning where we can find them and attempt to fashion a coherent whole. And there are funny moments as various subsets of existence are destroyed forever – the tiny fluffy chipmunk getting its own category was a highlight – but for a play about the end of the world there was a distinct lack of jeopardy. I longed for a moment when it would all fall into place but sadly that never came. We enter the auditorium with Tophe already on stage and stirring the fire as a low droning tune plays, but the promisingly atmospheric music then seems to peter out, as does the rest of the show, unfortunately.

We’ll burn that bridge when we get to it: and I guess that’s now is running at the Lion and Unicorn Theatre 42 – 44 Gaisford Street, London NW5 2ED until Saturday 18th October