Writer: Logan Jones
Director: Ella McKeown
When a friendship is lost, can you identify the exact moment it went wrong? Was it a series of distancing events or perhaps a shockingly explosive second that took you by surprise? Logan Jones’ play Age, performed at Riverside Studios as part of the Bitesize Festival running through August, ponders a male friendship formed in boyhood as intense bonds and shared vulnerability leave behind only pain and awkwardness when it is over. But Age needs to shake up the structure to build its dramatic potential.
Encountering an old friend at the airport, two adult men are forced to remember a time together that ended half a lifetime ago. Beginning with games and pleas for friendship at primary school that evolve into an even stronger connection in their teenage years, one night of closeness ultimately forces them apart forever.
Jones’ play, written as a monologue but told from two points of view, has a strong sense of the meaning of early friendships, the intensity of the bond and how painful it can be when it ends for seemingly no reason. And in the adults they become, Age also recognises the awkward emptiness left behind when the men meet again and are unable to find the ease in each other’s company that they once took for granted, too much separate life in between and neither willing to acknowledge the true reason the friendship ended. They find reconnection without reconciliation.
Yet, with long sequences set in the pre-pubescent and teenage years, Age takes too long to get to any of these points, burying itself in building the relationship with shared moments, family insights, playground games and their budding manhood. And – notwithstanding the strength of the performance – the play stutters forward almost chronologically rather than helping the audience to move between the great love in the past and its variable loss in the present, and what it means for the friend who was ‘dumped’ to be the one who cares least as an adult.
Age could enhance its dramatic momentum by borrowing a trick or two from director of the moment, Christopher Nolan, and interspersing these three timelines, playing scenes in richer layers as it cuts through periods in a more jumbled fashion, making the audience work harder to piece it all together. It could start at the end, however, which would create a frame for everything else and the entry point to each pointed memory that the writer includes, helping everything else to serve the story and the characterisation.
Performed by Aaron Rooney, the different characteristics of the two men, from accents to posture, cleverly follow them through their life, while the impressions of childhood mannerisms are particularly excellent. Age just needs a shuffle so the audience has to work harder to appreciate this meticulous impression of a dying friendship.
Reviewed on 1 August 2026
Bitesize Festival 50 runs until 30 August 2026
