Review: HEN, Hope Theatre

Photo credit: Max Curtis

You’ve just one night left to catch Josh Husselbee’s award-nominated new play Hen at The Hope Theatre (that’s if you can get a ticket). Although this black comedy two-hander feels like it certainly has a transfer future beyond its current limited run.

Hen follows grossly privileged flatmates Andrew and Alister who, in the wake of his mother’s death, brings a cantankerous chicken into their East London flat. According to his mother’s last will and testament, recovering addict Alister must keep this chicken alive in order to receive his substantial inheritance. This invisible chicken becomes the centre of a domestic comedy with a seat-squirming, unsettling edge.

Josh Husselbee works a sitcom set-up into a delightfully dark drama about addiction, dependency, privilege and mums. Husselbee’s script ranges from outright slapstick comedy to in-yer-face food horror. 

Director Sarah Fox and her cast of two work wonders to create a full world from the invisible elements of this play through one-sided phone conversations, interactions with unseen characters and, most importantly, the invisible eponymous barn animal. 

George Fletcher plays the troubled Alister, carefully crafting his character’s downward spiral. Fletcher’s performance is heartbreaking and provokes wonderfully uncomfortable, shocked laughter from the audience.

Oliver Lyndon is deliciously slimy as the smarmy, entitled Andrew, who spends the first scenes of the play swanning around like a Noel Coward character, complete with wafty silk dressing gown. While exuding superficial charm, Lyndon brings a chilling, psychopathic edge to the increasingly manipulative Andrew.

Husselbee’s comedy sometimes relies too heavily on repetition, and it can feel like the actors are getting caught up in a loop of repeated lines. The play packs in a lot of themes quite effectively, and dances deftly between dark comedy and psychological drama, but the very ending of the play feels a little bit too drawn out, so that some of the shock element is lost.

Overall, Husselbee’s Hen is a jittery, frantic, hilarious dark comedy. A creeping, toxic bromance that dissolves into a psychotic fantasy – sharply observed and penetrating as a hen’s beak. 

*** Three stars

Reviewed by: Livvy Perrett

Hen plays at the Hope Theatre until 15 June, with tickets available here.