Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog

This play started when it was announced as the first play by Dave Davidson, who’d worked in the security industry for 38 years, with a bunch of testimonials by well-known playwrights connected with the Royal Court. It wasn’t long before Davidson’s cover was blown. Even if you hadn’t known that, you would have at curtain up when we’re told Lucy Kirkwood is about to tell us the true story of the Quilters, kept secret by the Home Office, and why she used a pseudonym.

We first meet Noah & Celeste on one of those Guardian blind dates, a very funny and playful scene. Their relationship progresses and they move in together. Celeste’s nursing career develops, but ex-army Noah struggles and ends up mired in an online world of blurry truth, resistance to technology and conspiracy theories. We’re soon joined by the playwright Lucy Kirkwood, well an actor playing her, who narrates their story like a documentary, more desperately as it progresses. Noah & Celeste, now with a child, go deeper and deeper until it concludes in a mysterious tragedy.

For much of the time it zips along like a thriller, though I thought it was a touch too long at 110 unbroken minutes. Their three-room house revolves, with stage hands in full view, which seemed a perfect match for the piece. Jake Davies and Siena Kelly are terrific as Noah and Celeste, with great chemistry, a totally believable relationship. Priyanga Burford as the playwright becomes more manic and breathless as the story progresses. We even get to meet the playwright, or do we?

It’s a cleverly structured piece that’s expertly staged and performed and I found myself thinking about the issues of surveillance privacy & democracy, secrets and lies, long after I’d left the theatre. Go see This Is Not Who I Am, or is it Rapture, for yourself.