STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT:
TALKING, WALKING, TALKING SOME MORE

“A guy walks into a bar…” That action is the first line in a long line of jokes, and it is what happens early on in A Night Like This, but its serious look at sadness is no joke. It takes place at Christmastime, although the characters are not merry or singing holiday tunes… Deck the hell with melancholy – fa-la-la-la-la. Alexander Lincoln, nailing the role of angsty, frazzled Oliver, plays the guy walking into the bar, trying to get a drink without paying for it, and speaks a bit with a customer, lonely-looking Lukas (Jack Brett Anderson), who is sitting there trying to drown his sorrows. Lukas looked like he was considering drowning himself in the previous scene, leaning over a railing, raising himself on his toes, gazing down at the river, appraising the situation. Both men walk out of the bar, a few minutes apart, unhappily, and happen to see each other again shortly on the public bus. The very garrulous, bombastic Oliver assertively tries to engage the gloomy fellow in conversation. Lukas is resistant; Oliver is persistent. He rants virtually non-stop on the bus until they reach the bus stop in Lukas’s neighborhood, and what could have been an acquaintance of a few minutes turns into a few hours of togetherness. Misery loves company (compassionate, if possible).

At first, audience sympathy may favor the more guarded, sulking tragic figure more than the insensitive, insufferable, boorish one. But the actor, dialogue, and situations (screenplay by producer Diego Scerrati) and director Liam Calvert’s approach all conspire to make Oliver uniquely likeable. Invested viewers may well find the overbearing oaf is wearing them down instead of just being wearying. The protagonists have some things in common besides venting, lamenting, and sorrow: both have artistic ambitions, but doubt they have real talent. Lukas is a frustrated actor, and guitar-toting Oliver wishes he could publicly sing and play, but has accepted that it’s a fantasy made impossible due to lack of confidence and lack of ability. (Fortunately, A Night Like This allows for the character to be wrong about his talent, so that we can have the pleasure of an affecting musical performance of a touching song.) As far as their sexuality, Lukas freely admits he’s gay while the other man’s leanings are not as clear (to Lukas? to the audience? to himself?) — and maybe the connection that grows will have another facet.

They end up traipsing around London for hours, trading hard-luck stories, evading hard truths, arguing, sharing philosophies, making stops along the way: another pub here, a dance club there, the steps of a church for a prayer, a café for food, a detour to talk to the widow of Oliver’s very recently deceased father, and an unplanned trip to the hospital when the homeless teen tagging along with them has his nose broken in a fight. The ambling, ambulatory story covers a lot of territory — and that doesn’t mean the number of blocks on their trek, but rather the range of subject matter: morality; privilege; despair; belief in ghosts and being “ghosted” by a date; avoiding commitment; job dissatisfaction; destiny; and apophenia (perceiving meaningful connections between unrelated or random things).

There are some lines that can feel more scripted and pithy than natural for the characters, such as Oliver’s analogy that “if life is an orchestra,” he’s playing the bongos. At another point, happenstance and serendipitous incidents are contrasted with the methodically crafted scripts actors work with (“Every line means something. Real life has no meaning.”). Many of the many arguments between the two are arguably too similar in tone and testiness, with impasses alternating with rewarding moments of progress toward bravely breaking down walls and meaningful, caring bonding. However, too much depends on a “Here we go again” repeated cycle and all the ubiquitous forms of the “F” bomb and other crass words used as exclamations, adjectives, nouns, insults, and expressions of impatient, festering frustration — sometimes a few times in the same sentence. This kind of vocabulary style becomes tedious and ineffective, especially since it is used for all the main characters, including the crusty club owner the travelers meet on the night he has to close up shop forever – a splendid David Bradley, who makes the most of the too-brief role of a curmudgeon who lightens up for a couple of minutes and brightens up the mostly sad saga, which can be a slog.

While it has its slow spots and one can spot some room for improvement, hanging in with the characters’ hanging out and haranguing leads to later moments that have satisfying, powerful drama beyond the pals’ palpable pain.