One Day When We Were Young

Review by Ryan

⭐⭐⭐

One Day When We Were Young follows a couple who meet and fall in love just before Leonard is conscripted to the war during the blitz. We're are then wisked away to them 16 or so years later and again to them as elders but do they stay together?

In what can sometimes feel like a lifetime, we surprisingly cover very little of their lives during the 90 minutes and focus on a few minute details such as playing a piano. While some of this dialogue equates to heartfelt moments, too often the direction of James Haddrell lets moments linger, leaving us sitting in silence staring at a character waiting for something to happen. While a charming metaphor in this lovestory it sadly feels unintended and lacked any passion.

As Violet and Leonard's lives progress, the timid nature of the characters become repetitive and struggles to let the audience in. There's only so many times a "you know... Yes" can be charming. While Cassie Bradley and Barney White provide solid performances and physically resemble their changes in age well, they unfortunately weren't given enough character to flesh out in the first place.

The writing by Nick Payne stifles them in euphanism leading the audience to figure out a lot of the subtext which ends up being not that much. After five minutes of dialogue and only a handful of words the conversation turns out to be one of them brought a cake. Being left to decide an element or two of the plot is intriguing but being asked to invent their whole lives is actively disengaging.

The most impressive element is the staging with set design by Pollyanna Elston which utilises the space incredibly well providing multiple locations, interior and exterior utilising multifunctional set pieces. Although the scene changes could have been tighter and more creatively directed, what was there was impressive. As was the lighting by Henry Slater who cast the moon through windows and elevated the set well.

Ultimately this is a wartime story that had me wondering if it was going to be over by Christmas. With heartfelt moments, there was more to explore.