Rebecca Humphries is dynamite – pity about the play: Blackout Songs, at Hampstead Theatre, reviewed

Viewers watching a good romcom need to fall in love with three things. The boy, the girl and the affair itself. The new Hampstead melodrama, Blackout Songs, scores just one out of three. Rebecca Humphries is adorably chic and sexy as the Soho seductress who drifts from bar to bar, picking up men. Her toyboy is a disappointment, a teenage deadbeat who has none of her louche gusto. And his character is a puzzle when it ought to be crystal clear.

At the start of the action he wears a neck-brace and speaks with a stammer. In the next scene, his neck has healed and his stammer has vanished as well. Is he two characters? Or is he a con man who assumes different personalities, and if so why? He dresses in a paint-spattered tracksuit but he claims to be a welder, a rock star and a fine artist. Which is it? And he lives in a squat.