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London Stage Review: Pour Decisions, A Play About The Real Monsters

London Stage Review: Pour Decisions, a comedy about the real monsters of our own making, for one night only

Pour Decisions is a brand-new play, which debuted at the Edinburgh Festival this summer, and has been making its London debut at The Glitch, near London Waterloo, for one week only. It's from writer Alice Mogridge, who co-stars in this hour-long two-hander as Frankie, with Sasha Van Diepen as Jess. I saw it last night; it only has one more night left in its week-long run (tonight), and it would be a travesty if this is it. A story about two bar staff, after hours, propping up the Pour Decisions establishment in the shadow of the creepy boss, Digby. This is a play about bad people. There is just a degree of badness, the justification used behind bad behaviour, and a murder that neither of them can walk away from. The resemblance to Thelma And Louise is lampshaded in the play, but this is closer to Of Mice And Men. Except, unlike the usual Waiting For Godot approach to long, lugubrious pauses to draw meaning and significance from the characters, Pour Decisions is fast and furious, dialogue tripping over each other in an attempt to outrace the other. This may be an hour play, but there is three hours of a traditionally paced play packed into their back-and-forth. It's genuinely funny, but the kind of funny that is shared between two people, closer than sisters, who have no buffers between them. They can, and do, say anything to each other, safe in the knowledge that it would be without consequence. Except, in Pour Decisions, it really isn't. It's all about consequence.

It begins with a late night in the bar with Frankie and Jess putting their respective worlds to right, knocking back vodka and undiluted orange squash, exposing their class differences, as any British comedy is forced to do. It then moves to the following afternoon as Jess wakes up, still in the bar, as Frankie is about to start her shift, with someone else's mobile phone in one pocket, a baggie of cocaine in the other, and a dead body behind the bar. It's Digby. Both her and Frankie's reaction to the death, their selfishness, silliness and plans going forward expose an utter gaping hole in their lives, their moral compass, everything that has led them to this moment.

There's one knockout grossout line, describing the backed-up state of one of the toilets, as "toilet lasagne", specifically "shit, then toilet paper, then piss, then sick, then shit, then toilet paper, then piss, then sick", that is instantly imaginable, and as hard to shift as the object itself. But it also described these characters' lives, lasagnes of the worst things, jammed together, and unblockable. The jingle – and subsequent dance routine – courtesy of the vermin inspector, as they try to hide the body. The difficulty in opening a phone using the facial recognition of a dead man. The plucking of his teeth for amusement's sake. These are terrible actions perfectly balanced with silliness, and reminiscent of Julia Davis at her best.

Living in London, working around Soho, I have been in a new dive bar or seven, that will last a couple of months, before being replaced by another, and it rings so true, and the idea of a fully working kitchen being ripped out and replaced by twenty air fryers must have happened somewhere, as well as their subsequent "shrinkage", stolen or destroyed for kicks. This piece smacks of experience, on the front lines of bar staff, working for rich idiots with stupid ideas, wandering hands, and Turkish teeth that are starting to fall out. Alice Mogridge seems to have escaped this life to become a playwright. Because, of course, the theatre business doesn't have any room for Digbys, rich idiots who don't know what they are doing, chasing the latest fad and abusing the actors. From the fat fryer into the fire?

Pour Decisions, written by and starring Alice Mogridge, alongside Sasha Van Diepen, directed and designed by Molly Fraser, lighting design by Emma Langan, lighting and sound operator Tash Werblow, on at The Glitch from the 8th to the 13th of October, 2025. That's today. If you're in London tonight and can make it to the South Bank, this is your last chance. Take it. And bring someone with you. Four stars.

Pour Decisions

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Review by Rich Johnston

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8/10

Pour Decisions is a brand new play by Alice Mogridge, which debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe and is making its London debut at The Glitch, at London Waterloo, for one week only.

Credits

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Writer

Alice Mogridge

Actor

Alice Mogridge

Actor

Sasha Van Diepen

Director/Designer

Molly Fraser

Lighting design

Emma Langan

Lighting and sound operator

Tash Werblow

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