(seen at the afternoon performance on 10th January 2024)
Surely a stellar cast comprising Woody Harrelson, Andy Serkis and Louisa Harland (playing Jay Conway, Leigh Carver and Ruth Davenport respectively) in a new play by David Ireland, directed by Jeremy Herrin, should be appearing on a West End stage?
So what is it doing at the Riverside Studios, Hammersmith? Either Second Half Productions are feeling philanthropic bringing the West End to a struggling venue in zone 2 (and, incidentally, charging West End prices) or there is something else at work.
The monkey was going midway between the two on this. It helps the financially challenged theatre out, but also it wonders how this highly creative, defiantly un-politically correct explicit material would be received by a glitzier crowd. In fact, it was informed by a member of its discussion board that there was simply no theatre available when this cast was.
It’s the evening before rehearsals begin on Ruth Davenport’s new play about Ulster and “the troubles.” Both she and Jay Conway – the big American star with Oscar and ego to match – convene at director Leigh Carver’s home for a preliminary get-together.
Set designer Max Jones captures the home perfectly – with a witty ‘in’ posters joke for good measure. Oliver Fenwick’s lighting irritatingly rendering the large painting invisible to the far side of the auditorium, and provides a lamp with which Mr Harrelson collides unexpectedly at the performance the monkey attended.
Prior to Davenport’s arrival, Conway and Carver have been discussing a controversial scene Conway claims was cut from his “Paul Verhoeven” movie. Davenport’s arrival ends the conversation for the moment, but as Conway’s ignorance and arrogance grow, it becomes the trigger for Tarantino-esque antics.
Woody Harrelson draws Conway exactly as we expect. Overweening pride, constantly guzzling odd alcohol-free concoctions from jam-jars, contradicting himself at every turn as his mood swings like the child he claims at times to be. It is a rich performance to be savoured.
Director Leigh Carver has Andy Serkis matching his surroundings. Comfortably off, unruffled London Victorian suburbia, into which Conway unleashes that raging bull.
Placatory, ingratiating and with career ambitions buoyed by his imminent success with Conway and Davenport, as it all goes wrong Serkis’s hammering of pit-props back into position becomes a Sisyphean task. His descent to Conway’s level is morally painful yet hilarious to follow.
If Louisa Harland appears as a breath of grounded reality initially, it does not take too long for the others to crack her with the pressure of insane demands. Her increasingly extreme self-defence measures are inventive, even brutal, but always necessary.
Moreover, when not centre of attention, her reactions to her co-stars conversations on the opposite side of the stage are a delight few in the audience seemed to notice or appreciate as they could.
Irritatingly, Davenport’s character is given the perfect opportunity to end the play on a terrifically twisted high. Instead, writer Ireland chooses to prolong it with a rather “grafted on” further turn which does set up a spectacular finish (Renny Krupinski taking all credit as fight director) yet leaves no space to draw interesting conclusions to the questions of sexism, racism, morality and history so intriguingly set up earlier.
Still, Jeremy Herrin knows how to make 100 minutes pass in a flash, a blur of very credible theatrical folk indulging in familiar activities heightened by delightfully sharp and inventive writing.
It is a little sad that the monkey could almost hear West End playhouse owners declining this opportunity as “too strong for the major league.” This is for the most part a solid piece of writing taken to great heights by an excellent team effort snatching outrageous failure from the jaws of victory.
4 stars