 Pour Decisions is a sly and serpentine comedy-drama. A snake in the toy box that snaps from one register to another with whipcrack precision. Set in a grimy London dive bar, the play opens with Frankie and Jess closing up for the night, sinking into drinking games and the easy rhythm of long friendship. Beneath their rapid-fire patter, however, small class tensions flicker: Frankie, sharper-edged and working-class, can’t help noticing Jess’s genteel taste for orange juice “with bits,” a tiny tell of her more privileged upbringing. At first, it feels like familiar fringe territory with a two-hander in a pub, full of banter and personal revelations until the rug is abruptly yanked out. Frankie wakes from a drunken haze to find her lecherous, deadbeat boss Digbie lifeless behind the bar. Somehow, she’s killed him. By the time Jess arrives for her shift, the two are knee-deep in an improvised cover-up.
Here, the play pulls off its most daring move: rather than pivot into the heavy moral reckoning you expect, it doubles down on tonal dissonance instead. The banter doesn’t stop. The surreal detours don’t dry up. Jess treats potential murder with breezy practicality, debating whether to send Facebook updates from Digbie’s phone while casually discussing escape plans. Sasha van Diepen (Frankie) and Alice Mogridge (Jess) make an irresistible pairing. Their comic chemistry crackles with aloof absurdity, their asides often so surreal they feel beamed in from another genre entirely. The dynamic evokes the '90s female buddy energy of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion and Clueless, with the loyalty, the dysfunction, and a strange sideways logic. Beneath the gags, Mogridge laces the script with political venom. In an age where Reform UK is making gains, the relationship between a rich girl pulling pints for fun and a trusting, working-class friend becomes a miniature study of how populist figures manipulate loyalty without ever sharing the stakes. Figures like Nigel Farage have built entire careers on charming the working class while quietly exploiting them, and Pour Decisions effectively distils that dynamic. What makes Pour Decisions so effective is the way it marries its off-kilter humour with something more quietly incisive. Beneath the absurd asides and surreal pub chatter lies a sharp observation about friendship, class, and the strange ways we rationalise the unacceptable. Frankie and Jess’s antics may be rooted in farce, but Mogridge’s script keeps one eye fixed on the political and social fault lines running beneath them. The result is a play that pours the laughs generously, then spikes them with a bitter twist. Lee Hutchison 4/5 Pour Decisions Venue: Lime Studio at Greenside @ George Street Dates: August 13-16th Time: 1830 Tickets: www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/pour-decisions |
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