PATRICK MARMION reviews Unicorn at the Garrick Theatre, London: Trigger warning: Sexual candour but mushy..

 Unicorn (Garrick Theatre, London)

Rating:

Mike Bartlett’s new play starring Nicola Walker and Stephen Mangan from the BBC’s never-ending divorce saga The Split – alongside Erin Doherty (the young Princess  Anne from The Crown) — has one of the best trigger warnings you’ll see in theatre: ‘Contains explicit scenes of a sexual nature which some people may find intriguing’.

That sums up Bartlett’s play in which Walker and Mangan once again struggle with a warm but failing marriage, dwindling into mid-life tedium.

But then, Polly (Walker) has the bright idea that she and Nick (Mangan) can save their marriage by setting up a threesome with 28-year-old aspiring poet Kate (Doherty).

Mike Bartlett attends the opening night after party for the world premiere of ‘Unicorn’ at The Haymarket Hotel on February 13, 2025

And that makes Kate the titular ‘unicorn’ — a single woman brought in to save a pre-existing couple.

It’s a neat idea, but for all its colourful sexual candour (and it is very colourfully candid), Bartlett’s writing is also frustratingly tricksy, repetitive and evasive.

Walker’s Polly is a good liberal, slightly hyper progressivist who’s supposed to be a poet. 

But she’s prone to verbal diarrhea, spilling all her thoughts and feelings in a perpetual splurge that’s meant to make her relatable.

Mangan’s queasy, anxious ENT doctor Nick is reduced to neurotic babbling by the etiquettes around getting into bed with two women — one of whom is his wife.

And Doherty is a confident fantasy millennial, given to disordered outpourings of her own — mostly apocalyptic editorials.

For all its fearless talk about sex and relationship fluidity, ‘Unicorn’ heads towards a mushy, sentimental end that not all viewers will find intriguing

James Macdonald’s production looks slick, behind a neon arch which forms the edge of a Sydney Opera House shell fitted with a succession of furnishings — sofa, bench, bed etc.

Setting up a curious yarn, it’s quite cute and rather long-winded in its cosy anguish.

But for all its fearless talk about sex and relationship fluidity, it heads towards a mushy, sentimental end that not all viewers will find intriguing.