Danny And The Deep Blue Sea

The London Fringe Festival has some way to go before it catches up with Edinburgh, but if it includes more shows as good as this one, it will get there.  I was curious to see some live theatre on the new mini-stage at the Phoenix Artist Club (home of Player-Playwrights weekly readings from next month).  The acting area is cramped, but the room is highly atmospheric. Danny And The Deep Blue Sea is an early two-hander by New York writer John Patrick Shanley, who's best known for Doubt: A Parable.  Its set in the Bronx with two misfits, a man and a woman who meet in a bar and spend the night together.  Danny can't stop hitting people and Roberta is consumed by guilt; they're both crazy and dysfunctional, but they find something together and the play ends with the possibility of a real relationship.  If the play had been written here I think it would have had a less upbeat ending, but that's America.  Unfortunately the run is now over, but Andy Jones and Amy Tez are extremely good.  Tez (who also produced the show) displays what seems to me a pitch-perfect Bronx accent and a powerful mixture of vulnerability and aggression which makes her a name to watch.  London is over-supplied with talented young actresses, but this is one performer who deserves to be seen on a bigger stage.