Simon Ward reviews Condensation & Cannonballs at the Union Theatre

I last saw and admired Noah McCreadie’s work back in 2023 with his hard-hitting play Getaway/Runaway about the devastating impact of addiction on a family. In this piece, McCreadie himself takes the lead in a one man show directed by Hannah McLeod which is again rooted in the dynamics of family life. It also investigates the role of one’s ‘chosen family’ and how we are shaped by the friendships that are forged when they are most needed. It’s about how growing up can sometimes also mean growing apart from the people who were closest in those formative years, but the bonds can never truly be broken.

McCreadie plays Tom, a man in early adulthood trying to make his own way in the world. But there is an urgent conversation that he needs to have, and much of the play consists of him addressing his best friend from childhood, Eli. We hear how Eli somehow sensed that Tom really needed a friend and decided that it would be him. How Tom is seamlessly virtually adopted into Eli’s family, even incorporating an exhilarating trip to church. How Eli always tries to encourage Tom with learning the guitar despite his obvious lack of talent, especially when compared with Eli’s family.

The accoutrements of childhood – a football, a guitar, a lunchbox full of sandwiches – are the only props on a bare stage with just a park bench to provide the springboard for their adventures. Jonny Edwards’s sound design envelops the action with a witty counterpoint to Tom’s narrative.

We learn that Tom has a step-Dad and a Mum pregnant with a new sibling. Almost despite himself he comes to a grudging respect for his step-Dad, but his own home life seems much less glamorous than the new world into which he is now welcomed. It is exactly what he needs and he blossoms. And as the boys grow into adolescence Tom’s coming into his own coincides with a decline in Eli which Tom at first hardly notices, and then finds impossible to understand. The whole play is a desperate attempt to make amends for this heart-breaking failure. Just when Eli needed a friend, Tom was unreachably distracted.

McCreadie does not flinch from the pain at the heart of the story, yet there is much humour and gentleness as well. Ultimately it is a touching homage to the importance of friendship, especially male friendship and especially those friendships formed in young childhood before the pressures and distractions of adolescence kick in. So important, yet so easy to overlook or simply forget about. It is a performance where the emotions are raw and unforced, and the moments of comedy only serve to accentuate the devastating message at its core. This is a powerfully affecting show, intimate yet expansive, which speaks to anyone who has ever had a best friend.

Condensation & Cannonballs is running at the Union Theatre, 229 Union St, London SE1 0LR until Friday 6th November