Jab Review
1st – 26th April 2025
Jab is a personal story. Inspired by the breakdown of his parents’ marriage, writer James McDermott places the play in March 2020 at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Sometimes in life, not much happens. Sadly, this mirrored the play”
Anne (Kacey Ainsworth) and Don (Liam Tobin) have been together for 29 years, having met in Skegness dancing to The Eurythmics. Anne was the breadwinner while Don stayed at home to look after their, now grown up, children. Except he is still at home, and not really doing anything apart from burping, driving her to frustration and making unwanted sexual advances. Irritated by everything he does and says, she puts him down and he berates her. When lockdown is announced, she must carry on as an essential NHS worker, albeit working from home on her laptop, until she is drafted in, in person, to administer the vaccine – the vaccine that Don stubbornly refuses to take. The play revolves around the rising tensions of a couple on the brink of a breakup but can’t let go, alongside the mundanity of the everyday and Emmerdale title music.
Sometimes in life, not much happens. Sadly, this mirrored the play. At one point the entire scene comprised Don eating a packet of crisps loudly. It was a spot-on observation of what was happening up and down the land during the pandemic (including references to Barnard Castle and clapping on the doorstep for the NHS) but unfortunately that was not much, in more cases than not. Although one could argue that this was the point, even the brilliance of actors Ainsworth and Tobin couldn’t carry this through. Scenes were short and didn’t say or add much. The sound effects between scenes were over the top and didn’t fit with the play.
The ending was predictable, pointless, and I came away with nothing apart from a bleak reminder of 2020.
Rhea Shepherd
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