(This Is Not a) Happy Room review – Amanda Abbington on the guest list for toxic reunion

The Guardian

01-04-2025

A wedding is repurposed into a funeral in writer-actor Rosie Day's dark comedy. It might be a twisted spin on Richard Curtis's Four Weddings and a Funeral except the focus is not on a happy family of friends but on the dysfunctional Henderson brood.
Eric Henderson, a less than perfect father, dies just before he can tie the knot with his third wife, leaving his children, his ex and the arriving guests in a room filled with bows and balloons.
There is his eldest, Laura (Andrea Valls), a new mother cum human rights lawyer who looks more like a Chelsea Sloane and speaks to her hen-pecked husband Charles (Tom Kanji) as if he were an incompetent PA; middle-child Simon (Jonny Weldon), a 35-year-old hypochondriac; and the youngest, Elle (Day), an actor who has made it to Hollywood.
They are joined by their less than perfect mother, Esther (Amanda Abbington), to deal with grief, anger over the past and a surprise.
It is a spiky scenario but comes – like Curtis's film – with too many soft edges. Under the direction of Hannah Price, a talented cast is assembled but underused. Abbington is a potent presence but her character, for too long, is given functional lines, flitting on and off stage. Weldon, also a comedian, is entertaining but his character is at the centre of a revelation that is not dealt with in any depth.
The sibling relationships capture crabbiness and switch sweetly to camaraderie but do not reach below the surface of their testiness. A forgetful great-aunt is chucked into the mix for comic effect and so is – conveniently – a psychologist who duly analyses this family. The balance between comedy and darkness tips unevenly to lightness.
The theme of toxic family inheritance is an onerous one that has been expertly explored across the ages, from the canonical plays of Tennessee Williams to Beth Steel's dysfunctional family wedding in Till the Stars Come Down. That legacy hangs heavily over this offering. Day's writing is sprightly but does not bring enough true conflict or emotional complication. The reference to Philip Larkin's poem on family dysfunction seems too handy, the script's reflections on mortality too passing. So the play becomes the sum of its wisecracks.
A reckoning between Esther and Laura at the end contains a charge missing from the rest of the play. It is the first time the drama's veneer cracks open to reveal something deeper and more painful beneath.
At King's Head theatre, London, until 27 April