On the back wall of the Ensemble theatre looms a tall, wide, elegant wooden bookshelf, designed by Jeremy Allen. As the show begins, Matt Cox’s lighting spotlights certain eccentric items: a set of Babushka dolls, a vintage weet-bix can, a framed image of the hands of Michelangelo’s The Painting of Adam, and the Women’s Weekly birthday cake cookbook.

Summer of Harold, written by Hilary Bell and directed by Francesca Savige, is a triptych of three short comedic plays performed by two actors (Berynn Schwerdt and Hannah Waterman)—two monologues and one duologue. It’s ostensibly an ode to the nostalgia and memories that come from household objects. Watching it (before reading the program), I was a little confused about what these three plays had in common. It’s not the most obvious triple bill, but after sleeping on the show and starting to write this review, I realised how these audiences are connected: four older characters reflecting and obsessing over their past: the good, the bad and the ugly.

As a young person in my twenties, I am not Ensemble’s target audience. Although I had a nice night, I imagine that older audiences will relate to these characters and their interest in the past, and find greater personal connection to the storytelling. In the triptych, there’s Janet reliving her memories working at Harold Pinter’s house as a teenager in 1984 (the titular Summer of Harold), there’s Gareth, a bitter artist jealous of his successful peer (in Enfant Terrible), and in Lookout, there’s Jonathan and Rae, two people with a deep shared history reflecting on their past together.

Overall, the three triptychs felt uneven in quality. Summer of Harold, a monologue about Janet (Waterman) recounting her memories of youth, is fine but like any work of fan fiction, it relies on the audience knowing Harold Pinter and understanding all the jokes. I am not sure that the writing works as a self-sustained story, without the audience’s pre-conceived knowledge of Pinter. As a monologue set entirely in past memories, it also lacks any sense of stakes or urgency (this might also come from the limitations of this script being based on Margaret Woodward’s book).

Enfant Terrible, on the other hand, was an absolute highlight of the night. Schwerdt bounds onto the stage with an electric energy and makes it his own, enrapturing all of the audience before he even says a line. Gareth is a bitter and arrogant ceramicist whose best friend (and in his opinion, his inferior) has had a far more successful career than him. Over the 30-minute monologue, he confides in the audience, letting us in on the thrilling tale of how Gareth finally got his nemesis back after forty years of resentment. In contrast with Summer of Harold’s meandering tempo, Bell’s writing here is well structured and suspenseful (aided by dramaturg Jane Fitzgerald), delivering a charmingly hate-able protagonist whose unreliable storytelling and highly biased recount of events is very entertaining.

With Lookout, the energy fell again, a little. A cerebral meditation on ageing, living in the past and moving on; it’s placed somewhere between a drama and a mystery. Although dealing with undoubtably weighty subjects, it didn’t fully achieve the stakes it was angling for, and the final climax didn’t move me like it was meant to. Looking at the three plays together, the cast are unevenly matched: Schwerdt is a far stronger stage presence than Waterman, who was good but not extraordinary.

Although not the most obvious curatorial triple bill, Savige utilised her designers well to successfully bookend (excuse the pun) the scenes together with the strong visual image of the memorabilia on display. As each scene ended, the production returned to the disparate knick-knacks and, using spotlights, selected new items to push our story in a different direction. I was reminded of a ‘chose your own adventure’ story, or a DVD selection menu. Some might consider these items clutter, other might consider treasured family artefacts. Just like walking through a vinnies or a vintage shop, you never know what stories an item has to tell.

Jo Bradley