Review by Simon Jenner, March 3rd 2025
April 1942. Teenagers Leonard and Violet spend their first night together; they know it might be their last, as one leaves next day for war. And their Bath hotel is about to be licked with war too. Nick Payne’s 2009 One Day When We Were Young directed by James Haddrell enjoys its first revival at the Park Theatre (Studio 90) till March 22nd.
It’s not just how life has changed love, but how love has changed life; seared and altered it. First love won’t let go, nor will the song, a Richard Tauber hit. In 90 minutes Violet (Cassie Bradley) and Leonard (Barnie White) come together three times: that hotel encounter; early 1963 in a ferocious snow-bound winter. And a rain-drenched Luton in 2002.
Cassie Bradley and Barnie White. Photo Credit: Danny Kaan
Payne’s preoccupation with love, acted on by time and illness yet persisting, found its apotheosis in Constellations soon after this play was premiered in 2011. Here though, the elliptical and unsaid isn’t conditioned by micro-shifts of time and parallel universes, but in reticence. So we’re teased with the unspoken because the two characters constantly create ellipses in it: Bradley more ardently and White more tongue-tied at the beginning.
Before they can consummate, Leonard’s prescience becomes briefly eloquent: “I am actually incredibly scared. And not how you might think. I am scared, that once this war is over, and I am sent home, that you won’t be here. That you will have left”. Vows made are fragile, displaced in wars which disappear people.
White’s uncertainties, even fears are chided. Violet admits comically to Leonard’s alarming proposal they desert together that she’s “been breaking wind all day” with anxiety. Still if the earth can’t move for that, a ceiling does and Leonard takes charge as the Baedeker raid over Bath turns a window into a monkey-puzzle (a very deft piece of set). White shows how young Leonard teeters on the ability to express himself ever after his one outburst. But does something he attempts begin to decide Violet on another course?
Cassie Bradley and Barnie White. Photo Credit: Danny Kaan
The carapace of time and bitterness as they meet again in 1963 – White shows it also eating into Leonard’s body language – becomes dangerous, full of pathos. The reason for the couple meeting for the first time since 1942 becomes clear. Finally in 2002, as Leonard evades everything with the kind of ease that Violet did in 1963, he casually drops a revelation of his own, Violet has something to admit too.
Thus they’re first taken up with rationing, then in 1963 Violet’s obsessed with washing machines, Wimpy bars and TVs. Finally the status of the Jaffa cake in law is expounded by Leonard. Minor obsessions stand in for the rusty semiotics of a couple’s love.
There’s lightning-flashes of backstory. The war often broke through class barriers. So it does here, and you wonder how the urgency of war’s annealed a love that mightn’t have otherwise happened. More middle-class, sophisticated Violet (daughter of chocolate-shop owners) has even promised to teach apprentice butcher Leonard to play the piano. And she’s baked a cake from the whole street.
Then as the eager and direct young woman gives place in Bradley to the dignified but still love-tied wife with children drawn to the tongue-tied man, it’s Violet who finds indirection. Bradley’s infectious fire which darts and flecks round young Violet then becomes banked: suddenly saying of a shared illicit cigarette “I adore it”, like a synonym for sex. They’re blowing the smoke into each other’s faces, a striking consummation of its own in this production.
Cassie Bradley and Barnie White. Photo Credit: Danny Kaan
Beyond this are clues leading up to that “gone virile” or virulent moment, where Marnie’s virus or pandemic “bad mother” meme germinates. One person shows sympathy: a young woman Ella, en route to see her dying mother, who she dismisses as “an absolute bitch”. Ella confides something else, and does something else too. Morris sashays back and forth across the two narratives, which encompasses events after the flight, and Jake’s reactions. But then is he merely being reactive? We learn more.
Cory Shipp’s set is a sleek black runway of a cabin interior lit at the edges, where upstage a seat fronts a double design in half circles. It’s a large-scale metal logo of an airline behind Morris who stands, sits, walks in a contained envelope of disbelief. Megan Lucas’s pinpoint lighting and text captions above provide helpful text: something unexpected but welcome to many. Ellie Isherwood’s sound beyond jetting-off whooshes, amplifies robotic voices to counterpoint Marnie’s humanity.
Anna Morrris. Photo Credit: Steve Gregson
Cassie Bradley and Barnie White. Photo Credit: Danny Kaan
Finally slightly unsteady in spectacles, but never exaggerated in her faltering, Bradley’s Violet arrives despite herself because she can contain this no longer. White’s rickety dignity and slight hesitations show a man determined not to let himself go in the face of the one woman he’s ever loved. Cake and piano circle and return. It’s a masterclass in gesture, hapless eloquence and micro-aggressions turned to despair and kindness. And heart-rending singing. You desperately search every time for the said that almost refuses to be unsaid let alone uttered. White’s haggard stare hollows out the young man Leonard was. He might not want to open up what he felt even forty years before.
Hadrell brings a creative team he’s mainly worked with as artistic director at Greenwich Theatre. Polyanna Elston’s set, lit by Henry Slater, reflects the intimate space this play is always intended for. A bed and window (oddly opened when Blackout dictates it shut) sits at diagonals. The bed can be dismantled in full view: a feature of this work is the slick way the actors move the set about themselves. The components become furniture. A mat is sadly laid out. Slater’s lighting wields surprises; in particular an emblematic flickering and touching improvisation that has to be seen. Aidan Good’s sound design chiefly dictates the time period: “Love Me Do” is succeeded ironically by Bowie’s “The Golden Years” (as if we’re scudding through the 1970s as we don’t land there) and finally Oasis.
Bradley’s radiant Violet and White’s haunted stare compel across Payne’s 60-year touchdown on social history. Their aching performances of a seemingly mismatched couple ask: and yet… This grips anyone who can’t let first love go, anyone who stares homeward even now, wild with all regret. Unmissable.
Videography Adam Nightingale, Stage Manager Cora Parkinson Pre-Production Photography Simon Hildrew, Production Photography Danny Kaan, Graphic Design Tom Mann (Ghostlight).
Cassie Bradley and Barnie White. Photo Credit: Danny Kaan