The Unfriend Review: ‘Frances Barber gives a whirlwind of a performance’

Frances Barber must have squealed with delight when she first read the script for The Unfriend. Steven Moffat has gifted her with a broad, brash character to sink her teeth into and Barber, an all-guns-blazing performer who seldom does subtle, devours the part with side-splitting abandon.

In this expertly constructed comedy farce, Frances plays an American widow named Elsa Jean Krakowski who is a foghorn oversharer, a Trump supporter (“I’d do him,” she lustily declares), as far from woke as it’s possible to get, a clotheshorse for garish clobber and a whirlwind of a life-force who doesn’t give a f*** what people think of her.

And Barber gives a whirlwind of a performance, spitting out hilarious observations like “It’s a miracle he can have a holiday at sea” about a bed-wetting acquaintance on board a cruise ship where, at the start of the play, she meets British couple Peter and Debbie.

They’re amused by her archness at first, even if Peter – a Guardian reader and cynic who wonders “How can you start the day without hating someone?” – views her chirpiness as unnerving and her love of The Donald appalling. They exchange contact information, inviting the Denver-based ballbreaker to visit them in London safe in the knowledge that holiday friendships never endure.

Then, back in their cosy home with a typically listless teenage son and a daughter who feels ignored, they find themselves playing host to Elsa as she blazes in in a blitz of Louis Vuitton luggage. That’s bad enough but they’ve also discovered she could well be a murderer, so when she arrives for a visit and coos “I could eat you up!” they’re terrified.

Mark Gatiss directs the ensuing hilarity at a nifty pace. The play runs just under two hours, including an interval, and it hurtles along – the set piece being a scene about a policeman, a possibly poisoned sandwich, and a downstairs toilet that even a master farceur like Alan Ayckbourn would marvel at.

As Peter, Mark’s mate Reece Shearsmith is all nervous exasperation and no-one does that better than he can. (A nice touch: The family home is No. 9 on their well-to-do street.) As Debbie, Amanda Abbington comes into her own in the second act when she has a long monologue about the sheer madness going on around her. Gabriel Howell and Maddie Holliday convincingly play below their ages as teens Alex and Rosie. And Michael Simkins is perfect as a pesky neighbour who is, as Peter informs us, such a boring bastard that they don’t know his name after ten years.

The script goes around the houses a bit in the second act and the ending is easy to see coming. But there’s never a dull moment, brilliant zingers aplenty and Frances Barber really going for it. All VPL in an orange velour tracksuit, she seizes on Elsa’s vim and vulgarity with truly uproarious abandon.

Rating: 4/5

The Unfriend is at the Criterion Theatre, London, until 16 April. Get tickets here.