REVIEW: Blue - Sun & Wine Arts Company

Blue – Sun and Wine Arts Company at PIP Theatre

Written and Directed by Claire Yorston

Starring Laura Renee, Hayden Parsons and Reagan Warner

Sound Design by Hannah Page and Composition by Ziggy Enoch

Lighting Design by Claire Yorston

Sun and Wine Arts Company presented this original play by Claire Yorston, tracing a love story that appears sweet on the surface yet slowly reveals uncomfortable truths about trust, power, and control. Content warnings include domestic violence along with verbal, physical and emotional abuse.

Set inside the intimate PIP Theatre studio, the space had been transformed into a cosy coffee shop, complete with pages plastered across the walls and columns. The old theatre seats meant we were all angled in one direction, which gave us a bit of a neck-tilt, but the overall design suited the grounded, everyday realism of the story. The sound design by Hannah Page and song composition by Ziggy Enoch added much to the atmosphere too: the café ambience, the ocean waves when they sat on the pier, the soft hum of songs.

At first, Blue appeared to be a simple romantic drama… but that soft glow didn’t last long. Elias, just 23 and working as a barista, falls hopelessly in love at first sight with a customer, Annette. “This is a love story,” narrator Reagan Warner tells us, already settled in his corner observing the pair like a Fate who wandered in for a coffee. The pacing moved quickly by design, taking us through the initial spark, the awkward flirting, the honest conversations and the moment they made things official. The writing had the lyrical feel of reading a novella or watching a short indie film.

Annette, played by Laura Renee, entered the story with her walls built up high around her heart, and even armed with a list of printed questions for their first date in case the conversation stalled. Elias, played by Hayden Parsons, did his best to answer, sweet and awkward, while she silently judged every response (red flag number one). The whole date felt hilariously and painfully true to life, full of random tangents, unfiltered confessions and those tiny moments of vulnerability that catch you off guard. And when Elias looked at Annette and said “you add to my happiness,” I melted a bit.

But Annette openly looked down on Elias for working in hospitality (red flag number two). As the relationship progressed, their dynamic shifted in ways that felt painfully familiar. People can absolutely lose their identity inside a relationship, and this play explored that slow erosion with uncomfortable accuracy. Reagan’s corner-of-the-room narration and emotional commentary became one of my favourite devices in the show. As the couple’s relationship sours, his frustration echoed the audience’s own.

My early (good) assumptions about Annette transformed into a genuine frustration (props to Laura!) as she became increasingly dismissive and secretive and slowly chipped away at Elias’s sense of worth. Elias, meanwhile, wore his heart on his sleeve and didn’t recognise the warning signs until they were unavoidable, barely noticing her obvious body language. A short musical interlude from Laura on guitar landed beautifully, her voice expressive and aching on the lyric: “Now I’m covered in blood and I’m always blue, but thank God I don’t have to deal with you.” It felt like the emotional thesis of the show wrapped inside a haunting melody.

The humour in the first half really worked, mostly thanks to Hayden’s natural timing and the easy chemistry between him and Laura. Their playful banter and the rare moments where they truly communicated were believable. Elias tried to set boundaries with real maturity, vowing he would never cage her, but by the final third things had soured. Annette pushed him to change his career and even talked him out of breaking up with her. Her past trauma explained parts of her behaviour, but it definitely didn’t excuse it.

The final act was tough to watch as violence unexpectedly crept in. Laura's performance became genuinely chilling, while Hayden withdrew into himself - posture tightening, avoiding eye contact, his voice shrinking with exhaustion and fear. The play tackled the stigma around male victims of abuse directly with the line, “It’s not abuse? He’s a man."

Despite Annette and Elias being, objectively, a terrible match, Laura Renee and Hayden Parsons created something magnetic onstage. Reagan Warner, however, was the standout for me. Invisible to the characters but completely present for us, his emotional accessibility and honesty were phenomenal.

His final narration landed like a blow: “This is a real love story. One that didn’t have to happen. But not everyone deserves love.” That line absolutely wrecked me Claire! Her writing and direction carried us there with excellent pacing and a structure that was polished and compelling from start to finish. The audience was collectively absorbed by this story.

Blue was gripping, uncomfortable, beautifully acted and unexpected in its exploration of how love can curdle when control creeps in. A powerful original work from a team with huge potential.