Primary Motivations is a play about relationships, friendships and family. Sarah (Shoshana McCallum) has just got married to Stewart (Kyle Pryor), her own Mr Perfect, but she can’t help but think that something is missing. Her sister Claire (Elizabeth McMenamin) is continually let down by men and is sick of trying to find the perfect relationship. Meanwhile their childhood friend Lucy (Samantha Donaldson) is content with her life just as it is and is forced to mediate between the two sisters. 

The story is told through a patchwork of dialogue, monologue and video projections that show the characters as they are now and as children. As their dissatisfaction with their lives grows, they need to reach out, but can they always rely on each other? 

I feel that the mixture of storytelling devices, whilst ambitious, is not quite fully realised here. As a first time director, Simon Ward seems to have taken on more than he can manage and the play’s many jumps stop it from coming together as a cohesive whole. I like the video projections; the two girls playing the young Sarah and Claire, Saskia and Antonia Grant, are amazing actors for their age, but I just feel that they are unnecessary in a play with such simple, universal themes.

Also – this is perhaps something over which the company have no control, but – the cabaret-style seating layout is completely inappropriate and seems to alienate the audience from the more intimate scenes in the play. 

McCallum and McMenamin’s script is well observed and often very funny but the plot itself really needs tightening up in order to hold an audience for the full hour. In particular, I find the character of Lucy to be almost extraneous to the story; the play is very much centred on Sarah and Claire’s relationship and happy-go-lucky Lucy doesn’t seem to add anything to it. (Samantha Donaldson is a last minute replacement for Donna Brookbanks and so it may be that a lot of Lucy’s lines have had to be cut in order to adapt to the cast change, and Donaldson performs well, considering, but the play would not lose any of it’s meaning if Lucy was not there at all.)

The real strength of their writing lies in the monologues that pepper the story and allow us an insight into the characters’ emotions. Both actresses gave really lovely deliveries that show a genuine empathy with their characters’ situations and enable the audience to identify with them.

Primary Motivations has a lot of the right ingredients, it just hasn’t quite figured out how to put them all together yet.