Review by Simon Jenner, February 12 2026
★ ★ ★ ★
2019 London. The time’s very specific. After a lapse of two months two best friends meet, who’ve known each other since childhood. Until they don’t any more. Zoe Hunter Gordon’s debut play 1.17am, or until the words run out premieres at Finborough Theatre till March 7 directed by Sarah Stacey. Though it previewed for three days at 503 this is its first run.
“Shows off your boobs.” Katie’ s compliment to her old friend Roni is barbed. Roni (Eileen Duffy) has come to Katie (Catherine Ashdown) though it’s not her room but Charlie’s. Katie’s both grief-stricken but getting ‘support’ in a group of much older people. And sorting out Charlie’s possessions in boxes. Awkward, not as socially confident as Roni who labels her various simultaneous lovers as a Fleabag-ish joke, Katie has other things to fall back on.
1.17am, or Until the Words Run Out. Catherine Ashdown and Eileen Duffy Photo Credit: Giulia Ferrando
Initially Katie wants Roni out but after skirmishing with quick-fire elliptical dialogue we find that Charlie who Roni slept with isn’t Katie’s boyfriend but her brother. And he’s dead. Quite how he died is one of those elements peeled back in this switchback play. Where the two friends reconcile; then it’s Roni’s turn to feel anger. A play ostensibly about grieving cannily asks how many different griefs there are. Katie’s is obvious, but it’s more complicated than she knows.
It doesn’t help Roni’s mobile buzzes constantly. Dzima her controlling boyfriend as Katie sees him – and he’s incredibly persistent – won’t let Roni out of earshot. He even explodes audibly at one point (in Andrej Vyshadok’s voice). Protective Roni says, who wants Katie to join the party thudding upstairs. Friends of Charlie (and there is Charlie to be had as they discover) who meet for a final wake before everyone quits the building.
Roni’s setting up a film business with Dzina and moving in with him. Katie who’s just been accepted for a PhD course proposes late on that they share again. But where? Katie’s proposal upends the whole dynamic of the soon-to-be vacated flat itself. She still doesn’t see Roni’s choices. And is Roni, revealing one thing, still blind herself to another?
The zippy dialogue shows a touch of mastery in elliptical discoveries; palimpsests of slight misdirection. Katie slowly learns something happened to Roni: Katie wants to rescue her. But she doesn’t know everything.
The reveals peel back over 75 minutes in this breathless overlapping exchange. The 2019 setting might reflect the play’s inception but having a Russian or more likely Ukrainian lover raises other questions after February 2022. Nevertheless a rich backstory might have been developed.
Mim Houghton’s long white lateral strip bifurcating the reverse space also partly climbs the walls. The bed teems with an abandoned life of cheap books, and features a bedside radio that can be flicked in with a mobile in a tiny table in Sarah Spencer’s sound which rumbles faintly above or authentically blares so much it drowns out words before being shut off. Anouk Mondani’s costumes show Katie’s shapeless shirts and jersey’s (some adopted from Charlie) against sassily-dressed Roni, occasioning Katie’s first jibes. Both wear clothes as a defence. Katie more obviously as a comfort blanket against grief; Roni as sassy armour.
1.17am, or Until the Words Run Out. Eileen Duffy. Photo Credit: Giulia Ferrando
Though cluttered with grungy clothes and bric-a-brac it’s still all that a 20-something man has come to and left. Including Seamus Henry’s Beowulf bought for Katie’s birthday some time ahead. Catja Hamilton ‘s lighting is light-bulb merciless. There’s no shadows here, no shade to nudge nuance.
This isn’t territory frequently visited. Relationships between two bright young soon-to-be professional women of 24 (their age is precisely suggested) one of whom it transpires doesn’t need to worry about cash. Yet both are damaged. What is it that so holds Katie in her fury they Roni never told her about Charlie? What feelings does she have, and what binds Roni to her when Roni makes the first move yet draws back with the Uber ever approaching and the boyfriend forever buzzing?
This nagging huit clos of feeling distantly recalls Claire McIntyre’s Low Level Panic. This is more privileged less grungy and more specifically traumatised. Hunter Gordon refuses easy answers or perhaps answers at all. Perhaps acutely conscious of less is more she’s pared things back to open-ended if occasionally sketchy feelings. The tang of a sizzling individuality keeps breaking out in broken litanics and jumps. Hunter Gordon has the beginnings of a very specific subject matter, and style. She’s listened to advice (dramatists including David Eldridge are thanked) and one feels absorbed lessons of indirection.
What the script lacks – and dialogue sizzles in two superb performances here – is a build or a chance to breathe. It’s as if Hunter Gordon’s needs to dig another level and find silences. There might be more flashes of humour. Best moments come as one protagonist selects music and the other affirms or hates it. We need more of that, perhaps more wildness as depicted in a programme photo.
Both performers are excellent, circling each other, coming together cleaning backwards or hunkering down in remembered trauma. Ashdown at first all hunch and denial opens into warm neediness but flinches back at things revealed only to return. Duffy sauce and seemingly confident surprises in sudden registers of trauma. Most of the dialogue is vivid and clear, just the occasional word swallowed.
A cracking debut though, that picks you up and never lets go. Like any play that gifts us believable characters, it leaves you wondering what life, not just Hunter Gordon, will do with them. Highly recommended.
Assistant Set Designer Phoebe Hunter Gordon, Sound Designer Sarah Spencer, Stage Manager Yuval Brigg, Production Photography Giulia Ferrando
General Manager Tara Marricdale, Assistant General Managers Sophie Gill Silvia Verzaro and Jaemin Yu, Assistant Resident Director Jillian Feuerstein, Cover Art Designer, Jillian Feuerstein.
Producers Sabrina Zavaglio for ZAVA Productions and Neil McPherson for the Finborough Theatre. PR Kevin Wilson PR.
1.17am, or Until the Words Run Out. Catherine Ashdown. Photo Credit: Giulia Ferrando
