Table 17 Review: A Romcom That Reunites Exes Over Dinner

Marisha Wallace and Jamael Westman play exes who reconvene over dinner in Table 17, Douglas Lyons' romcom now running at Kiln theatre, London, until 24 October.

The production arrives in the UK trailing commercial momentum. Table 17 comes with a series of sold-out runs in New York and Los Angeles behind it.

The appeal is not hard to locate, at least on the evidence of this London outing. The show slips down as easily and pleasantly as an old-school, Saturday-night TV meet-cute — with one structural twist. Writer Douglas Lyons' story is a meet-again-cute, because the couple at its centre are not strangers. They are exes.

That premise gives the evening its engine. It has been several years since air steward Jada (Marisha Wallace) and aspiring music producer Dallas (Jamael Westman) felt the sting of each other's betrayals. Now they find themselves seated at table 17, the eponymous setting, to hash out unfinished business — and, the play suggests, maybe to relight the fire.

Lyons, the writer credited with the piece, frames his reunion with what the Guardian's review calls "dazzle and cheek," describing the result as an "incorrigibly likable" and "sparky old-school charmer." The critic's framing positions the work firmly in the tradition of light romantic comedy rather than subverting it: the pleasure lies in execution, familiarity and the two leads' chemistry, not in formal experiment.

The casting carries its own London theatre weight. Jamael Westman is known to audiences as the original Alexander Hamilton in the West End production of Hamilton, and Marisha Wallace has built a career in musical theatre leading roles. Here both play against large-scale spectacle in a two-hander-scale dinner setting — the table itself functioning as the entire dramatic arena.

The structure is simple: two people, one dinner, a backlog of mutual hurt. Jada and Dallas must decide, over the course of the evening, whether the betrayals that split them are negotiable, or final. The "meet-again-cute" conceit lets Lyons mine comedy from pre-existing intimacy — the pair know exactly where to wound each other — while holding open the romcom's traditional question of whether reconciliation is possible.

The Guardian review's title — "a tasty romcom served with dazzle and cheek" — signals its verdict on tone over substance, praising the delivery rather than claiming reinvention for the genre.

Table 17 continues at Kiln theatre, London, until 24 October. Its sold-out American runs, combined with a warm UK critical reception, suggest the dinner-date formula travels well — and that Lyons' name is one producers on both sides of the Atlantic will now be watching.