Review: Marriage With Benefits (Barons Court Theatre)

Review by Dan Sinclair

⭐️

In the Summer of 2016, the UK voted to leave the European Union, and many would say that they weren’t too pleased about it. Controversial pledges aside, it made the already complicated visa process even more impossible to navigate for people wishing to live and work in the UK. Now imagine exhausting all that time and money and finally getting here, and then trying to date. This is the premise of Marriage With Benefits, written and performed by Cora Frank. It makes a quick stop-off at the Barons Court Theatre before flying up to Edinburgh for a run at the Fringe. A monologue show about dating with a single chair for a set is an all too common setup for the Fringe, so it has to really be doing something different. Marriage With Benefits seeks to look at this world through the perspective of a German artist in a ‘post-brexit world’.

Marriage With Benefits opens with a TEDx talk from Mai, a German artist (played by Cora Frank) where she poses an interesting question - how can you express passion and love in a language that is not your mother tongue? However, within seconds, the projector and the presentation break down. We are left with an unfiltered Mai, free to whizz us through the difficulties and frustrations of their dating life. Unfiltered and sadly unstructured. Instead of taking us through a story, Marriage With Benefits quickly descends into a series of scenes that just don’t really go anywhere. First, Mai takes us to a nightclub (that lacks any music). They elaborate further on the difficulties of dating in a second language, before quickly jumping into how they will never be able to date someone who doesn’t understand or feel the weight of a national history filled with war, violence and atrocities. But this is the basis of a play in itself, not a 4-minute scene. It makes no effort to address the fact that Mai, a self-identified queer artist, would also have faced violence under Nazi rule, nor does it attempt to consider how the British should similarly carry a sense of generational shame. The following scenes face similar problems, pointing out issues but never exploring them further. 

Another scene that sticks out is an interactive segment where Mai pulls out some questions from the British Citizenship test. ‘Who wrote Lord of The Rings?’ ‘Tolkein,’ an audience member shouts out immediately. After a few more questions we move on to the extortionate costs associated with gaining a working visa. But what was the point of the test scene? Is it that it is too easy or too hard? It seems that the point was… that it’s pointless. ‘Why do we need to know about the UK of the past when we should be being quizzed on the UK of the present?’ I guess that’s a question for every other citizenship test around the world. The writing often comes within inches of hitting on a great point, but it consistently lets its self-described chaotic energy get in the way. 

Frank is clearly an experienced performer, seeking to explore an experience that is close to home. The play is a blend of theatre and stand-up comedy, featuring some audience interaction throughout. Unfortunately, the two just don’t gel well together here. The stand-up element is visualised as Frank regularly admitting when scenes or audience interaction has gone awry and strayed from the pre-planned script. In an effort to be charming and honest, it instead simply confuses an audience. The production bared the hallmarks of sloppy directing, an absolute pet-hate of mine is seeing the highlighted script stapled into a prop book. The character received an email - yet the sound effect was a telephone call? A projector was used, but a light was shone at the back wall so you couldn’t see anything that was projected. The performer forgot their line so informed the audience that they fluffed a line. Small gaffs like this build up to create a problem much bigger than the sum of its parts. 

The show ends on a confusing note, their working visa application has been rejected as they couldn’t get Arts Council England down as a backer. This climax has little to do with the rest of the play and answers no questions about dating as an EU national in the UK. It just isn’t good enough to say that it’s chaotic and absurd so it doesn’t matter. There are a few premises for a great play lying within this monologue, eg: an office satire about an immigration lawyer, a romcom (or drama) between Mai and an English partner, but Marriage With Benefits seeks to do all of them and none of them at the same time. There are exciting theatre-makers at work here, but this show just needs to re-visit the drawing board. 

Marriage With Benefits is showing at the Barons Court Theatre until 29th July.

London tickets can be found here: https://www.baronscourttheatre.com/marriagewithbenefits

Edinburgh tickets: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/marriage-with-benefits

Photos by Julian Huke