Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Nic Hardman, Mary Jayne, James Bray.

It has perhaps arguably long been a topic of conversation between people who find the subject of other people’s love lives and sexual experiences a thrilling and endless game to while away the time, on just how can a person fancy or fall in love with a two people from the opposite genders; the sniggering and the elbow nudging a distraction and deflection to the point which is that human beings are animals and attraction is not based solely on which side of the cup you like to drink out of at all times. For some it even comes down to a choice between friends and which one they may have to say Bye to when the fall out of choice rears its ugly head.

For newly married Mary Jayne, the love she has for her safe husband is overshadowed by the lust she feels for her best friend Jenny and as the day comes when she finally tells of her love, the feeling of being too late sparks across the Unity Theatre stage and the capturing of many different emotions enough to cause havoc with the internal voice which declares such confessions.

For Nic Hardman as the cog between the newly married couple, the spoke in which the truth of all their relationships hinged, this was a crowning glory of a part, one in which like her music, sang of an enjoyable greatness and a certain empty sorrow which was well observed and given such depth that the desperation in the way the two women’s lives had spiralled out of control at the beginning was juxtaposed by the hope at the very end, a backwards reveal is always a cool and responsible way to showcase the meaninglessness of it all.

Franki Le–Voguer’s delicately handled story of a woman finding it hard to come to terms with her own sexual identity whilst becoming unsure of who she is attracted to out of her friends resonates with many, not perhaps the simplicity of being either gay or straight as is pointed out but the coming to terms of the revolutionary, the demands of sexual adventure which sees both genders as beautiful and exciting.

Bye is an enjoyable play, a great story well acted and with tremendous sympathetic direction from Stuart Crowther, a man with more than one string to his talented bow, and one that appeals to the inner broken romantic in us all; a piece of art that reflects life in all confusions perfectly.

Ian D. Hall