Book Review: The Unfriend
“But how do you put it? There’s no etiquette for this - there’s no thing people always say in these circumstances. ‘please don’t come to our house, we think you’re a murderer”
Now and then it's good to read a play, I find it breaks things up a bit. Especially, a comedy– albeit a dark comedy because this involves a good-natured American lady, an overly polite British middle-class family and your average boring neighbour. Oh, and did I forget to mention? The American lady is a serial killer, and she’s living in this family’s house. Classic.
The thing I like about good plays is that you can devour them in a day, you just can’t put them down. Crap ones usually take a few days – the struggle is real. But I somewhat knew I was going to enjoy this one. Steffen Moffat is a damn good writer. He wrote the BBC drama ‘Sherlock’ for crying out loud, which wasn’t massively popular and a global success at all.
However, down to the play at hand. The Unfriend focuses on a polite middle-class couple: Debbie and Peter they live nice, polite and quiet suburban lives with their two children. They go on a cruise holiday where they meet Elsa. A lovely, blunt, Trump-supporting American lady whom the couple befriend. She also likes to talk. A lot. This comes to the detriment of Debbie and Peter, who are just too polite to be forthright. This means, after A LOT of emails, Elsa has been invited to stay with Debbie, Peter, and their family for a week. But here’s the crux of the matter, Google. Whether you love it or hate it, in this day and age, people really like to rely on Google to, you know, ‘Google It’: News, recipes, what is this rash on my arm, and why does the internet say I have two days to live? Oh, and people. Everybody googles everybody. And that’s how they come to realise Elsa is a serial killer. And they’ve invited her into their house. Golly.
Let's be honest here, we Brits, especially the middle-class ones, (I would know I am one of them) are just too damn polite for their own good. No matter how hard we try we just can’t be straightforward and get to the bloody point. When Debbie and Peter try to get rid of Elsa, they soon become more concerned that they may hurt Elsa’s feelings than the fact that they have a serial killer under their roof. Go figure. And naturally, it backfires spectacularly.
The writing here laughs at the British middle class in a good way whilst also throwing a little shade at our overly loud and vibrant American cousins. It's cracking, it allows us to laugh at ourselves without it being too harsh on the British overly polite middle-class psyche. We look at it, laugh and think ‘god that’s so true’ and then carry on as normal. Well, what else are we going to do? Start being rude?! No, politeness is deeply ingrained in British culture. This is why the character of Elsa is such a refreshing delight – she says what we’re all thinking. She is our very British antithesis. Probably why they made her character American. And a trump supporter. If they ever show this play again, would gladly buy a few tickets.