I Could've Been Better

The makings of a funny and touching piece of comedy-theatre are present in I Could’ve Been Better, fledgling company Idiot Child’s play about “beautiful failure”, made with support from Bristol Old Vic’s artist development programme, Ferment. But it occasionally struggles with the fundamentals, too often relying on a vague, wistful visual poetry to carry its story and sentiment, when it could benefit from plainly stating exactly what’s going on more often.

33-year-old James, played with very suitable awkwardness by Jimmy Whiteaker, is a loveable man-child loser who works as an announcer at Allerton Railway Station and keeps up a pen pal correspondence with Olympic swimmer Duncan Goodhew. Besides his partner Sue, swimming is James’s great passion, and he’s determined to prove he isn’t entirely the meagre fellow people take him for by winning a gala race. Albeit in the over-10s category, against his “wanker” arch nemesis, an obnoxious 11-year-old girl.

There are some nice moments of improvised audience interaction – for instance, when James asks a girl to throw a glass of water in his face to signify diving in the pool, and needs to do a second take after she over-enthusiastically precedes her cue.

Elesewhere, though, the boxing analogies and references used to evoke his relationship with Sue are somewhat unclear and unexplained. And is she real or, as sometimes seems to be hinted, imagined? And it's this lack of clarity that occasionally means the emotive physical theatre set-pieces, cleverly employing toys and models, are robbed of impact.