Hello, old Friend. The last time Matthew Perry was in the West End, it was for David Mamet’s “Sexual Perversity in Chicago,” back in 2003. Director Lindsay Posner’s production received a decidedly lukewarm reception, but unperturbed, Posner and Perry are reunited for this world premiere of Perry’s playwriting debut. Fans of wisecracking Chandler Bing of “Friends” will find the results familiar: “The End of Longing,” in which Perry also stars, is to some extent a middle-aged reboot of that phenomenally successful TV show, albeit with a bar instead of a coffee shop, and with much more swearing.
It is tempting to imagine that the play is also partly therapy. Perry’s problems with drugs and alcohol are widely known, and in his comedy-drama he seizes the opportunity to spill his guts on the mess that addiction can make of a life. Only the profoundly ungenerous wouldn’t wish him well. The problem is that the play, a flimsy construction of romcom and sitcom — all mawkish cliche and brittle, quick-fire banter — can’t bear the weight of the heavier themes that Perry clumsily attempts to bolt onto it. At its best, Posner’s glossy production is mildly entertaining. At its worst, it’s like being trapped in a corner at a smart party with a maundering drunk, spewing sentimentality and self-pity.
Perry is Jack, a 40-year-old photographer who tells us — in the first of the play’s many dramatically lazy, confessional monologues — that he would “rather drink alcohol than do just about anything there is to do on the face of the planet.” Jennifer Mudge as Stephanie is, she announces baldly, “a whore”; immaculately groomed and designer-dressed, she makes a good living “blowing strangers” who attest she’s “awesome.” Her friend Stevie (Christina Cole) works in pharmaceuticals and is adorably neurotic, while Jack’s long-suffering pal (Lloyd Owen) introduces himself simply by declaring, “I’m stupid.” He’s called Joseph — just like Joey Tribbiani. You’d think Perry could at least have come up with a different name.
This quartet of good-looking, lonely singletons, who come together in a plush Los Angeles bar, are inevitably all going to fall for one another. But can Joseph tolerate high-maintenance Stevie’s quirks, and will she put up with a guy who “thinks the Magna Carta is a giant cart”? How long before Jack’s drinking drives Stephanie away — and can she give up sex work for love?
Because none of those questions is likely to keep anyone guessing for long, tension and impetus are in short supply. So while the play is bowling episodically down its predictable path toward an optimistic ending, there’s little to divert us, other than the appeal of the performers and the intermittent sparkiness of Perry’s dialogue. However painfully self-conscious he becomes when, as an author, he attempts earnestness, the hours he spent in the “Friends” writers’ room helping to hone Chandler’s zingers are in evidence here; he can certainly tell a joke. There’s no doubt, either, that he and the cast deliver those lines with comic elan. The characters themselves, on the other hand, are desperately undernourished, and in place of emotional depth, we get merely feeble pop psychology. “I’m insecure because my father made me feel like I was nothing,” Stephanie bleats — and Perry sets up a rather unconvincing parallel between her dependence on prostitution and Jack’s on booze. Meanwhile, Stevie and Joseph contemplate the life-changing possibilities of parenthood. The more determinedly the play turns its attention from tickling our funny bone to tugging our heartstrings, the more strained the writing becomes. Eventually, it’s downright queasy.
In spite of that, Posner marshals the action with slick efficiency on a set by Anna Fleischle that gleams and twinkles with urban sophistication. City lights glitter through vast, gleaming windows; neon winks, and gliding walls of chic exposed brick are stained in moody red and deep blue light. Perry is charismatic, wry, still attractive but, aptly for habitual boozehound Jack a touch paunchy; and he conveys the shift from smooth barfly to mean, and finally desolate, drunk with some conviction, growing increasingly rasping and raddled. Cole snaps and twitches effectively enough as Stevie, Owen does what he can with decent dimwit Joseph and Mudge’s Stephanie stalks the stage with a glamazon authority that cannot disguise the fact that she’s essentially embodying the hoary hooker-with-a-heart stereotype.
Jack offers a tremulous, AA-meeting testimony late in the second act that is probably the play’s key moment, and as an actor, Perry gives it his all. But its language, its account of self-loathing and fear and misery, are so well-worn that its impact is minimal. And there’s nothing new to be learned about love or friendship from this set of cardboard creations and contrived relationships. So really, what’s the point — and who cares if Jack and company find happiness? Sad to say, ‘The End of Longing’ will have most of us longing for the end.
“The End of Longing” is at the Playhouse Theatre, London WC2, until May 14; www.endoflonging.co.uk
Sam Marlowe is a freelance writer.