Most Favoured ★★★

As Fistful of Love blares out over a chattering audience taking their seats, and a quiet, artfully dishevelled Travelodge-style hotel room set strewn with clothing and miscellaneous belongings waits patiently for the return of its actors, you can be assured of one thing: The Soho Theatre’s Most Favoured is a play with style.

Written by David Ireland and directed by Max Elton, Most Favoured is a 45-minute two-hander originally intended for the Edinburgh Fringe – which is also its setting – something the play slightly struggles with. A few laughs fall a little short of the mark for the sole reason that we are not at Summerhall; we’re in Soho.

Not that the performers don’t try – and succeed – to carry off this unlikely comedy. Mary and Mike have just had a one-night stand. Mike is excellently brought to life by Alexander Arnold as a wonderfully oblivious, loose-limbed provincial American tourist, whereas the tightly wound Glaswegian singleton Mary – the real engine of the piece – is skilfully played by Lauren Lyle.

Mary believes she has found love. Mike single-mindedly relishes his first-ever bucket of KFC. Their miscommunication is played for laughs for the next half an hour, with a slight escalation over Mary’s true, secret intentions behind their encounter.

It might be a little sparse, but the performances and dialogue, a finely crafted back and forth, do a lot to make up for it – as does the show’s aforementioned style. Ceci Calf’s set and costume are particularly impressive, with a brilliant set-based visual gag at the beginning, a tasteful wardrobe including biblical boxers, and a thematically and technically impressive ending sequence where sound, light and design come together in divine harmony. There is clearly a real artistic cohesion here between the team on this play, and it’s great to see.

It is in the final fifteen that the real drama of the play is revealed, and it’s a twist of apostolic proportion – one which shifts the tone of the play and turns Mike into much more of an active character. The problem is that he then shortly leaves and the play finishes. It is almost like the play has the pacing of a 90-minute piece, but with the second half cut off – not to say it isn’t a complete story, it’s more that it wraps up with a beat that might be a little abrupt.

There is also a slight and strange tonal shift right at the end, away from the kind of social satire and towards something that is slightly… evangelical? A potentially self-complicating move that leaves an audience wondering, “What was that show actually trying to tell me?” A sentiment that could be both rewarding or unsatisfying depending on one’s temperament.

Regardless, this is a well-put-together show, and Arnold in particular is mesmerising in his studied ignorance and idiotic fried-chicken fixation. If you’re in the mood for something funny, confusing and extremely well-designed, Most Favoured might be the holiday show for you.