Simon Ward reviews Sweet Victory at the Etcetera Theatre

In this new play, written and directed by Elise Marra, we are introduced to two combatants in the American Revolutionary war, one on each side. John Thomas (Mikkie-denè Le Roux) is a soldier on the American side, John Smith (Emma Wilkinson Wright) is an officer for the British. Both have somehow found themselves detached from their comrades in a remote and chilly landscape, where trapped and frozen squirrels are the only nourishment. Smith is quite clear that his duty is to hold Thomas prisoner until the Royal forces triumph and his captive can be charged with treason. Thomas is prepared to humour him – he does, after all, know the secret to defrosting those squirrels.

Although now on his own, John Thomas has seen a lot of action and has survived numerous battles. John Smith, on the other hand, has only just arrived from England, and there is a suggestion that he may actually have fled at the first sign of battle. This puts him in a precarious position if the two were to be found, although no doubt bringing a prisoner to justice might count in his favour. He is nevertheless nervous, and makes up for it with pompous bluster. Thomas is undeterred and his American charm gradually breaks down the English barriers to discover the real man underneath the quasi-militaristic manner. Whereas for Thomas, the war is an existential battle to establish the rights of the Americans to determine their own destiny; coming from England, Smith is more likely to think it an absurd quarrel over the price of tea. Not for the first time the coloniser is incapable of understanding the motives of the rebellious colonised.

This is a strange little oddity of a play. A tiny slice of shared American and British history, no doubt much more familiar to an American audience than a British one. Whereas this is part of the foundational myth of the American Nation, for Britain it marks an ignominious defeat to be glossed over before it built its new Empire elsewhere around the globe. The production is a strange thing as well. Although the characters are men, the actors are women. It is not really clear whether this is making a point – war, certainly in the 18th century, is normally a male preserve, of course, and neither of these men are what you might think of as soldierly types. Mikkie-denè Le Roux’s performance is disarmingly friendly and charming, whereas Emma Wilkinson Wright seems more mannered. Although she probably represents the repressed and buttoned-up Englishman against the more energetic and outgoing American, I found something artificial about her style which I am not sure worked in the context. Envisaged as a comedy, the piece comes across more as a quirky character study of two unlikely combatants and the blossoming of a still more unlikely relationship. It is an intriguing idea, but one which perhaps needs further work to bring out the humour, and to make it more resonant in this country.

Sweet Victory is running at the Etcetera Theatre, 265 Camden High Street, London NW1 7BU until Monday 28th September