The Gift
04 February 2025
Park Theatre
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
The Gift, currently running at the wonderful Park Theatre until 1 March, is a searing comedy that ranges from the familiar to the utterly absurd.
When Colin receives an anonymous gift in the mail, he is utterly consumed by what it might mean and who could have possibly sent it to him. The unassuming cake box, filled with an unpleasant surprise, could mean anything, or nothing, but Colin isn’t built for measured reactions. Despite his sister Lisa and brother-in-law Brian trying to help him make sense of this surprising commentary on Colin’s general unpleasant behaviour, he fully spirals into paranoia and existential self-doubt.
The protagonists in this play are larger than life, quite extreme characters with grumpy and intense Colin who cannot let anything go, peace keeper Lisa who tries to keep everyone’s life in balance, and brashly hilarious Brian who cannot keep his mouth shut. Yet they seem well constructed and fully realised with brilliant pacing throughout and a hefty dose of adult humour heaped onto the action. While the humorous mystery feels frivolous at first, it quickly unravels itself into social commentary, a journey of self-improvement and personal development that revels in the quirky idiosyncrasies found in many everyday people, from those who cannot stop themselves from indulging in punny banter at every opportunity, to those who take obsessively focusing on a deep dive a little too far.
The Gift is a hilarious exploration of personal accountability, social interactions, and mental inflexibility, an existential comedy mystery with plenty of surprises that delve deeper than expected into the human psyche. The perfect entertainment for potty-mouths and petty people.
