Life, love and a game of pool

Directed and created by Edinburgh student Will Lawton, The Windmill deals with the adolescent agonies of love as two friends hang out in the pub, playing pool, eating chips and drinking Coke. Josh (Will Lawton) and Pete (Lawrence Manson) have unrequited love for Alyssa and Becky respectively, but cannot bring themselves to express their feelings.
Like their emotions, the play itself doesn't go very far: it merely ends rather than concludes. Instead of a provocative discussion, it provides an account of the power that love can hold over people when they are young. However, the often well-written dialogue between Josh and Pete manages to encapsulate and express sometimes complicated emotions without seeming too trite. The other two characters, Becky (Sophie Furse) and the Bar Girl (Emma Coleman), are walk-on parts and are not given full attention or allowed to develop. It seems as though the Bar Girl—casually admired by the "blokes" despite their other love obsessions—could have played a more important and interesting role in the play, yet she fails to be fully incorporated.
There are flashes of comic insight in the laddish banter between the two leads; none of these, however, relate to love or the themes of the play. Some of the jokes fall flat, and leave gaps in the play that are neither comedic nor thoughtful.
Although The Windmill feels like a more intelligent exercise for not being a stereotypical rom-com, the ambivalent ending of the play promises very little in the way of hope or change; the characters content simply to continue with the status quo of uncertainty rather than risk rejection. It is hard to imagine drawing any other conclusion in such a slow-paced production; the show is as equally ambivalent as the characters in not wishing to make a clear statement or run a risk.
On the whole, The Windmill misses the mark in that it neglects to fully develop and explore some potentially interesting themes. This is a shame, particularly as it discusses that rare topic: passionate, romantic love from a male perspective.