Days in Quarantine review – looking back to lockdown

Jules Chan in Days in Quarantine at the White Bear. Photograph: Lidia Crisafulli

This part-verbatim drama concerns the lives of twentysomethings in the pandemic lockdown. A debut written and directed by Jules Chan, who performs too, there is clapping for the NHS, Adriene’s online yoga and talk of the test-and-trace system and stockpiled toilet paper that seems almost surreal in its reminder of what we have recently been through.

But the play also returns us to that time without bringing anything beyond its documentation, and feels too underdeveloped in its drama, even for a debut with mainly new graduates as actors.

Days in Quarantine at the White Bear theatre. Photograph: photo by Lidia Crisafulli

The material is reminiscent of the online dramas that grew out of the lockdowns and captured their immediate realities. The present day is what feels missing here: Days of Quarantine plunges us back into that time, with little sense of how the effects of the lockdowns have impacted in the intervening years for young people, and so it ends up feeling historical.

Eight actors, many in night- or gym wear, switch between scenarios: there are frustrated flatmates (Matthew George-Williams and Chan), a lonely woman (Taz Munyaneza), a mixed race couple who talk about Black Lives Matter (Jordan Bangura and Esme Hough), neighbours for whom romance buds (Leo Anthonio and Marlene Del Bello) and a son (Sam Cordwell-Roberts) whose father is ill.

A few of these vignettes spark but most stay sadly grounded. The script is uneven and jarringly abstract at times, while the acting is equally jagged. The cast brings unwieldy energy with too much abrupt volume and unconvincing emoting. We cannot buy into their exchanges, however meaningful the scenarios may be.

There are flashes of a stronger play: Chan’s character speaks about racial abuse against British Chinese and east Asian communities which segues into reflections on identity and immigration, for instance, and there is another monologue about working-class Englishness by George-Williams. But these feels awkwardly compressed and might be better explored in their own play.

As it stands, this production takes us back to the experiences of lockdown but also feels similarly grinding.

• At the White Bear theatre, London, until 19 November.