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Beginning
You didn't fancy it then?
Fancy what?
Getting in the taxi.
No.
Every story starts somewhere.
It's the early hours of the morning and Danny's the last straggler at Laura's party. The flat's in a mess. And so are they. One more drink?
David Eldridge (Market Boy, The Knot of the Heart, In Basildon) returns to the National Theatre with a sharp and astute two-hander that takes an intimate look at the first fragile moments of risking your heart and taking a chance.
This tender and funny play received its world premiere at the National's Dorfman Theatre in October 2017.
Fancy what?
Getting in the taxi.
No.
Every story starts somewhere.
It's the early hours of the morning and Danny's the last straggler at Laura's party. The flat's in a mess. And so are they. One more drink?
David Eldridge (Market Boy, The Knot of the Heart, In Basildon) returns to the National Theatre with a sharp and astute two-hander that takes an intimate look at the first fragile moments of risking your heart and taking a chance.
This tender and funny play received its world premiere at the National's Dorfman Theatre in October 2017.
96 pages, ebook
Published December 14, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
November 23, 2022
Update, 11/'22: I did a quick reread, after having read part two of Eldridge's loose trilogy, Middle - which does NOT have the same characters, but is a look at three stages in the relationship/marriage game. I think I appreciated it more on a go-round - it is slightly better than I found the second play (part three not written, as yet.)
While this is a fairly accomplished character study of two extremely lonely and damaged people, reaching out to each other in the aftermath of a housewarming party, I can't really say it particularly breaks new ground or goes anywhere extraordinary.
And two things REALLY bugged me - the first is that there were an inordinate amount of local UK references that meant absolutely nothing to this Yank, and could have been universalized to make them more comprehensible. And secondly, a dozen times (I counted!) Eldridge gave a stage direction that there should be silence for five minutes - and as a veteran stage writer, he should realize that even 30 seconds can be an excruciatingly long time on stage for a silence; as the play only ran 100 minutes total in production, that was obviously ignored by a more savvy director. That said, it got terrific reviews for its initial NT staging, and is coming back for a West End run, largely it seems, due to the extraordinary performances by the actors involved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68U2a...
While this is a fairly accomplished character study of two extremely lonely and damaged people, reaching out to each other in the aftermath of a housewarming party, I can't really say it particularly breaks new ground or goes anywhere extraordinary.
And two things REALLY bugged me - the first is that there were an inordinate amount of local UK references that meant absolutely nothing to this Yank, and could have been universalized to make them more comprehensible. And secondly, a dozen times (I counted!) Eldridge gave a stage direction that there should be silence for five minutes - and as a veteran stage writer, he should realize that even 30 seconds can be an excruciatingly long time on stage for a silence; as the play only ran 100 minutes total in production, that was obviously ignored by a more savvy director. That said, it got terrific reviews for its initial NT staging, and is coming back for a West End run, largely it seems, due to the extraordinary performances by the actors involved.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68U2a...
August 6, 2023
A truly bad play. One so obviously, unapologetically written by a man.
How so? Our leading lady Laura has the most one dimensional motive and backstory. No family. No friends (despite having literally hosted a party). Lonely. And she is adamant she fancies Danny.
Danny. Who is, in my opinion, the ick incarnate. And so any ‘connection’ the two speak of as the play unfolds is completely unbelievable to me. I cannot picture any woman in the real world who shares any of the same personality traits as Laura to actually feel the way she feels towards someone such as Danny. He’s awkward, but not in a charming way. Self destructive to the point that any hormones that may have been stirring for Laura at the start of the play will have surely dried up 10 pages in. Danny is the shining protagonist for any awkward man who doesn’t usually have much luck with women.
Danny is a troubled man who’s made mistakes, which Laura barely calls him out on and seems more than willing to ignore. He’s almost allowed to be himself, and get away with his prize, which is Laura’s unconditional affection. Which I think is a stupid message. What change is Eldridge trying to effect in the men who may resonate with Danny?
Laura on the other hand I feel sorry for. I feel like the real Laura is trying so hard to escape this play. But she’s trapped by Eldridge’s words, locking her into this situation with these feelings which, yes, could resonate with some women, but again what is the message?
Laura will simply oblige and keep saying yes. Because Eldridge has written her to. For Danny. Despite, I believe, any real world woman’s common sense. Red flags GALORE. I cheered halfway through the play when, after half a dozen if not more attempts from Laura to get Danny to kiss/fuck her, she finally questions whether it was time he left.
But of course he doesn’t. Because the biggest reveal yet is still to come. Eldridge writes this play awkwardly on purpose. The chemistry which is supposedly a given circumstance is nowhere to be found. And he almost tries to justify this lack of connection and Laura’s constant offering of herself with a reveal so cliche, so dull, so a-man-writing-a-woman that it’s laughable.
This play fails the moment you don’t believe the supposed connection between these two characters. And I don’t. This is not how attraction works. And the hidden stakes, Laura’s REAL motivation, muddies the waters even further, making this a shoddy attempt at a love story with no real reason to exist on the stage.
How so? Our leading lady Laura has the most one dimensional motive and backstory. No family. No friends (despite having literally hosted a party). Lonely. And she is adamant she fancies Danny.
Danny. Who is, in my opinion, the ick incarnate. And so any ‘connection’ the two speak of as the play unfolds is completely unbelievable to me. I cannot picture any woman in the real world who shares any of the same personality traits as Laura to actually feel the way she feels towards someone such as Danny. He’s awkward, but not in a charming way. Self destructive to the point that any hormones that may have been stirring for Laura at the start of the play will have surely dried up 10 pages in. Danny is the shining protagonist for any awkward man who doesn’t usually have much luck with women.
Danny is a troubled man who’s made mistakes, which Laura barely calls him out on and seems more than willing to ignore. He’s almost allowed to be himself, and get away with his prize, which is Laura’s unconditional affection. Which I think is a stupid message. What change is Eldridge trying to effect in the men who may resonate with Danny?
Laura on the other hand I feel sorry for. I feel like the real Laura is trying so hard to escape this play. But she’s trapped by Eldridge’s words, locking her into this situation with these feelings which, yes, could resonate with some women, but again what is the message?
Laura will simply oblige and keep saying yes. Because Eldridge has written her to. For Danny. Despite, I believe, any real world woman’s common sense. Red flags GALORE. I cheered halfway through the play when, after half a dozen if not more attempts from Laura to get Danny to kiss/fuck her, she finally questions whether it was time he left.
But of course he doesn’t. Because the biggest reveal yet is still to come. Eldridge writes this play awkwardly on purpose. The chemistry which is supposedly a given circumstance is nowhere to be found. And he almost tries to justify this lack of connection and Laura’s constant offering of herself with a reveal so cliche, so dull, so a-man-writing-a-woman that it’s laughable.
This play fails the moment you don’t believe the supposed connection between these two characters. And I don’t. This is not how attraction works. And the hidden stakes, Laura’s REAL motivation, muddies the waters even further, making this a shoddy attempt at a love story with no real reason to exist on the stage.
May 13, 2021
I am NOT a 40-something who is still looking to find love, and I imagine if I read this in a few decades time I would’ve loved it a lot more - young Simon however found it a little lackluster until the final monologue. It was all lovely, and I enjoyed an evening with the characters, but it didn’t feel like anything I’ve not seen before?
I also couldn’t help but compare it to Eugene O’Brian’s “Eden” which told a similar love story better for me.
I also couldn’t help but compare it to Eugene O’Brian’s “Eden” which told a similar love story better for me.
September 14, 2022
ADing this play at the moment and having great fun bringing Eldridge's writing to life - overall a highly moving and thought-provoking, though personally I prefer Middle
February 17, 2024
A lovely play exploring loneliness with a spin on it. Nice
January 15, 2019
This is good. This is very good. I like this one.
Read
March 11, 2026Beginning - David Eldridge
“I look out in life. I look up. I look at the sky. I like to walk up to Ally Pally on a Sunday. If I looked in, I’d fold inside myself.”
“It’s like sometimes everything you say is another obstacle. Another dare not to like you.”
“I couldn’t stand my loneliness. I couldn’t stand their loneliness. They all wanted kids. Some of them were more up front than others. But it was always the same. The loneliness. The patency of it.”
“I’m thirty eight years, I’ve been sensible my whole life, Danny.”
“You frighten me. The way you look at me. You unpeel me.”
“We kiss like it’s the kiss that makes you feel like you’re home.”
“No more giving everything to work. Because already life is beginning. “
“I want the You. I want the You.That’s what I want.”
“I want a good beginning.”
This play walks with you through all human emotions you have when talking with a new encounter. It’s so strange, so raw, so forward and agonizing.
What amazed me about this play was the constant push and pull away of both characters. We find ourselves at the beginning of the play at the end of a party, thrown by the character Laura, we’re in her apartment. Danny was invited by Keith, who is a client of Laura.
She wants him to stay the night, he keeps giving her reasons not to and through both of their hurt and humanness through this difficult encounter they get to know each other better.
What is interesting is the recurring theme of not knowing each other. One of them would say: Because I know you, and the other one would respond with: you don’t know me.
Topics change, they open up and show each other more and more of their inevitable humanness. This book made me want to shake the characters and at the same time I felt struck in anticipation what is actually going to happen next.
The play is exactly what the name of it is: a beginning. Just a constant conversation, the constant of ebb and flow.
I’ve learned from this that you don’t need all that much. It can be the beginning of a story, or a thought, of an action, of something.
The beginning is an interesting point because you don’t know where it will go, which direction the beginning will head in.
I also really enjoyed the humanness (for a lack of better or more words). Both characters admit to either their most vulnerable, hurting feelings or their strongest urges and wants, and they just sit with it and with each other and make fingerfood inbetween, a very heartwarming, touching beginning. It made me curious about other works of Eldridge.
“I look out in life. I look up. I look at the sky. I like to walk up to Ally Pally on a Sunday. If I looked in, I’d fold inside myself.”
“It’s like sometimes everything you say is another obstacle. Another dare not to like you.”
“I couldn’t stand my loneliness. I couldn’t stand their loneliness. They all wanted kids. Some of them were more up front than others. But it was always the same. The loneliness. The patency of it.”
“I’m thirty eight years, I’ve been sensible my whole life, Danny.”
“You frighten me. The way you look at me. You unpeel me.”
“We kiss like it’s the kiss that makes you feel like you’re home.”
“No more giving everything to work. Because already life is beginning. “
“I want the You. I want the You.That’s what I want.”
“I want a good beginning.”
This play walks with you through all human emotions you have when talking with a new encounter. It’s so strange, so raw, so forward and agonizing.
What amazed me about this play was the constant push and pull away of both characters. We find ourselves at the beginning of the play at the end of a party, thrown by the character Laura, we’re in her apartment. Danny was invited by Keith, who is a client of Laura.
She wants him to stay the night, he keeps giving her reasons not to and through both of their hurt and humanness through this difficult encounter they get to know each other better.
What is interesting is the recurring theme of not knowing each other. One of them would say: Because I know you, and the other one would respond with: you don’t know me.
Topics change, they open up and show each other more and more of their inevitable humanness. This book made me want to shake the characters and at the same time I felt struck in anticipation what is actually going to happen next.
The play is exactly what the name of it is: a beginning. Just a constant conversation, the constant of ebb and flow.
I’ve learned from this that you don’t need all that much. It can be the beginning of a story, or a thought, of an action, of something.
The beginning is an interesting point because you don’t know where it will go, which direction the beginning will head in.
I also really enjoyed the humanness (for a lack of better or more words). Both characters admit to either their most vulnerable, hurting feelings or their strongest urges and wants, and they just sit with it and with each other and make fingerfood inbetween, a very heartwarming, touching beginning. It made me curious about other works of Eldridge.
Read
February 28, 2025I read this because my undergrads had to. It’s a one-act play that takes place over the course of about two hours in a Crouch End living room after a flatwarming party, in which two people—Laura, whose flat has just been warmed, and Danny, who turned up with a business client of Laura’s to whom she extended an invitation on a whim—move through the tentative steps of opening themselves up to each other. It’s meant to be played in real time; there are stage directions like [Silence. Five minutes?] As a result, I’m not convinced that reading Beginning is the correct way to engage with it, at least not as a first go-round. Obviously, the actors’ decisions about what to do during those silences are crucial to the way the play goes over, and the way we’re meant to understand the development of their relationship with each other.
That said, though, it’s possible to exercise your own imagination while you read. The reason the undergrads had to read it was because we were talking about time that week, and I’ve always thought that time—both quantity and quality—is something writers use to get us to understand character dynamics. If we’d had the time (heh), Nathan Hill’s Wellness would have been a good counter-example, a novel that is 600+ pages long because it needs to simulate what 20+ years feels like for its protagonists, whereas Beginning immerses us in a floating present (of about two hours’ duration) in order to achieve the same kind of audience empathy. The long view vs. the deep view, I guess. Anyway, I felt I had a better handle on Beginning after discussing it, as usually happens. Source: free access via DramaOnline
That said, though, it’s possible to exercise your own imagination while you read. The reason the undergrads had to read it was because we were talking about time that week, and I’ve always thought that time—both quantity and quality—is something writers use to get us to understand character dynamics. If we’d had the time (heh), Nathan Hill’s Wellness would have been a good counter-example, a novel that is 600+ pages long because it needs to simulate what 20+ years feels like for its protagonists, whereas Beginning immerses us in a floating present (of about two hours’ duration) in order to achieve the same kind of audience empathy. The long view vs. the deep view, I guess. Anyway, I felt I had a better handle on Beginning after discussing it, as usually happens. Source: free access via DramaOnline
May 8, 2024
Didn't find the conversation of the part where she has to stress multiple times that treat her like a human quite comfortable, maybe because it's true and happening in real life than we women(at least me ) have to stress it over and over again to a potential lover. Quite exhausting.. and a bit fed up
November 11, 2017
An amazing play.
Starts unassumingly. Builds perfectly -- seemingly unnoticeably -- for a while.
Then, by the end . . . Boom.
Excellent.
Starts unassumingly. Builds perfectly -- seemingly unnoticeably -- for a while.
Then, by the end . . . Boom.
Excellent.
June 23, 2020
This is a very short but enjoyable read. Some parts didn't work for me as much as other moments did but still an enjoyable read. I'd like to see it on the stage.
September 6, 2020
LOVE a locked room kinda drama!! good stuff, unexpected i guess?
March 6, 2022
tender and funny realistic tableau of an awkward beginning
September 22, 2023
Crazy behavior asking a rando to impregnate u
November 22, 2023
As a text... Nothing special.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews