ajhlovestheatre

LOST ATOMS 

by Anna Jordan

directed by Scott Graham for Frantic Assembly

Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, London – until 28 February 2026

running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval

https://lyric.co.uk/shows/lost-atoms/

Frantic Assembly’s signature blend of thought and feeling expressed through ecstatic, expansive movement melds with Anna Jordan’s beautifully observed tragicomedy charting the highs and lows of a relationship in Lost Atoms. If it sometimes feels that the choreographed sections in Scott Graham’s visually arresting, beautifully performed production feel more grafted onto the text than arising organically out of it, it’s impossible not to admire the skill and indeed to feel the feels.

Robbie (Joe Layton) and Jess (Hannah Sinclair Robinson) look back on their stormy but frequently heartwarming relationship from coffee shop meet-cute through joyful sex, awkward in-law introductions, insecurities, potential parenthood to trauma and regret. Jordan writes her characters, flawed and relatable as they are, with an abundance of affection and has them express themselves in language terse, humorous and natural, shot through with devastating shards of cruelty when the emotional stakes become high. 

Robbie and Jess seem to be recalling their past from some sort of liminal space – Simisola Majekodunmi’s lighting snaps back and forth between sepulchral pallor and warm realism – so as to comment on the unreliability of memory (they frequently contradict each other) and, quite movingly, to imagine potential futures for each other, but not necessarily together. The shadow of Nick Payne’s Constellations sometimes seems to hang over Lost Atoms although, textually at least, this is a less ambitious affair. 

The chemistry between Layton and Sinclair Robinson – him cautious, grief-tinged but touchingly open-hearted, her fearlessly running at life with healthy doses of sunshine and attitude – is quite something to behold. Whether cradling each other in a stunning “bed ballet” viewed from above, confiding things they’ve told no one else, or bickering with the passion of people who really matter to each other, they entirely convince, and it’s impossible not to care about them, even at their most insufferable. The tenderness takes your breath away…and so does the brutality. Jordan gently upends traditional romantic notions by casting the go-getting Jess rather than the more reticent Robbie as the dominant force in the relationship. “You’re my knight in shining armour” he points out wryly, and, for all his insecurity and issues, when things go asunder, for a number of reasons, she is the prime mover.

Layton and Sinclair Robinson, as athletic as they are riveting to watch and truthful, are so good that they almost divert attention from the script’s second act meanderings into soap opera territory, although a joint trauma, which I won’t spoil here, is sensitively handled. It’s also a little long: what could have been a punchy ninety to a hundred minutes is bloated into nearly two and a half hours including interval, and it might verge on the interminable without such cracking performances and the considerable pleasures of Graham’s bravura staging. 

Apparently unimpeded by gravity or indeed vertigo, the actors bounce, glide, clamber and ricochet all over Andrzej Goulding’s neon-edged, multilevel set of dozens of drawers that can pop open to reveal props or become steps and platforms, while also evoking a cityscape at night. It’s exhilarating to watch and occasionally very affecting as the airborne movement conveys the heady euphoria of new-found love before devolving into the treachery and danger when that connection is under threat.

Intriguing, engaging and ultimately frustratingly elliptical, Lost Atoms doesn’t fully satisfy as a play, although it has some wonderful things in it. See it for the astonishing performances, Jordan’s unerring grasp of how real people talk, and the uniqueness of Frantic Assembly’s vision and house style.