For its 21st birthday, Young and Hungry is celebrating with three short plays. They are all comedies with tragic undertones and they will appeal to their target audience. Each play, however, needs cutting by 10 minutes. The plays cover the positives and the negatives of social media, the comedy and tragedy of intense self-reflection, and the grieving young coming to terms with death.

The next play is not, we are instructed by its presenter Max, a play but “a presentation” of her minutely documented, anally retentive life, created especially for the benefit of the Young and Hungry Festival and the rest of mankind. She has three “friends” along to help her as well as a sullen musician and Bill on lights who is longing to pull the switch if Max goes over her allotted time. She also has to cope with an outraged audience member as her presentation slowly dissolves into chaos which, as she rightly says, is much more likely to be remembered than if it is a hit. [More]

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Those familiar with Uther Dean’s work will know better than to take at face value the arrogance suggested in the full title of his latest play: The Presentation of Findings from My Scientific Survey of the First 7500 Days of My Life, Done in the Interest of Showing You How to Live Better Lives. All is not as it seems.

Compared with his many works, this one has most in common with his solo piece Everything is Surrounded by Water which he kept on insisting was not a show. If Max Casey Addison had her own way this would be a solo show too but Young and Hungry doesn’t work like that so she has had to share the (lack of) love – which in the end is what it is all about. Max also insists “This is not a show, it’s a presentation!”

A circular screen, adorned with the impressive work of AV designer Kerri Nicholson, is echoed with a circular blue mat. File boxes – some labelled: ‘Panics’, ‘Mistakes’, ‘Flaws’, ‘Love’ – are stacked in the room behind and will be ransacked as the presentation proceeds (set and costume designer Jonathan Hobman has done an excellent job).

A musician/singer called Jay (Andy Gartrell) stands at a masked-off keyboard and plays us in with a rather funereal organ as ‘Welcome’ graces the yet-to-be festooned screen. Three others, who will turn out to be Max’s brother Ash (Matthew Savage), ardent admirer Rory (Josephine Byrnes) and ‘what am I even doing here?’ friend Elliot (Bridget Newick) wait patiently on a meticulously set out line of chairs. Elsewhere an alienated friend called Kelly (Lilia Askew) lurks.

Up behind us at the console is Bill (lighting designer and operator Ryan Knighton), who is determined the one hour allotted span will be adhered to. I note, without ascribing significance to it, that his is the only non-androgynous name (although one does know of women called Billie). But I digress.  

Arriving late to her own presentation, Max is soon revealed as a control freak. She could become tiresome if we were not drawn into solving the implicit mystery of what she is trying to protect herself from. Or maybe it’s just that she’s somewhere on the Asperger’s spectrum which pretty well puts her on another planet; a planet where others – including her family and friends – are aliens. That’s one way to interpret her lifelong (7500 days so far) obsession with Dr Who, anyway, and her lack of empathy for the helpers she has been obliged to include.  

Maria Williams completely inhabits the highly voluble and ultimately vulnerable role of Max, compelling us to bring the humanity she appears to lack to our ever-changing assessments of her present behaviour and personal history-to-date. It’s a pleasure to see such emotional intelligence brought to a role that requires denial of her emotions.

Director Sally Richards has tackled the challenges of this unusual play with aplomb, drawing an array of very distinctive characters from the actors in the service of our quest as an audience: to separate out an objective truth from the subjectivity of Max’s presentation as the forces of reality subvert it. The flow of it all is very well modulated.

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