Stage Kiss review – behind-the-scenes romcom is charming but slippery

Hampstead theatre, LondonA first love is rekindled on stage and off in Sarah Ruhl’s metatheatrical romance and farcical send-up of hammy old musicals It doesn’t take long for the protagonists of Sarah Ruhl’s 2011-set romantic comedy – two actors who have been cast in a 1930s melodrama called The Last Kiss – to realise they’ve signed up for a theatrical flop in the making. The director is hopeless, all wafting hands and evasive “just trust your instincts”; the young supporting cast are as wooden as the boards they’re tentatively treading; and the bombastic script feels ludicrous to the pair’s naturalistically trained ears. There is also a whopper of an art-imitating-life situation afoot: the pair, elusively named He and She, are portraying but also happen to be first loves, reuniting to crackling chemistry despite She and her character each being married with a grownup daughter. As a farcical send-up of rehearsal room antics and the high-kicking hamminess of 1930s musicals, Blanche McIntyre’s production works well enough. There are a steady stream of jokes and satirical nods to the genre (one devastating revelation in The Last Kiss gives way to a tap routine),