The timing couldn’t have been better. Joe Penhall’s new play arrives just at the moment when the relationship between members of parliament and the people they represent is uppermost in our minds. And the fact that James Corden is making his long overdue return to the London stage, playing a troubled army veteran alongside Line of Duty’s Anna Maxwell Martin as a hard-working backbencher, will surely help at the box office as well.
That said, this turns out to be a surprisingly tepid study of a vulnerable man whose life has lost its moorings. Penhall, who has explored mental frailties before in the more accomplished Blue/Orange, a chamber piece set in a psychiatric clinic, is said to have interviewed a number of MPs including Jess Phillips, Labour’s former shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding. Yet in the end his storyline doesn’t rise far above a run-of-the-mill episode of a soap.
We first see Corden’s garrulous character, Alec, as he is fitting an alarm system in the office of the conscientious Monica. As they chat, they discover that they once went to primary school together. Having established that tentative connection, Alec — who convinces himself that he is talking to an old friend — sees an opportunity to unburden himself of his worries. Estranged from his wife and child, he harbours vengeful emotions to her new partner. His language suddenly grows menacing, and when Monica learns that he is on anti-psychotic drugs, her polite but ineffectual attempts to put a distance between them grow more urgent.
Part of the problem here is that Corden, a likeable enough presence, can’t bring enough depth to Alec’s sense of anguish. Instead, his tone runs all the way from aggrieved to mildly aggrieved. He gets the most out of some gently comic asides early on, but even the most accomplished actor would struggle to inject conviction into lines as leaden as “Every man I know is a victim of violence and abuse.” Maxwell Martin’s MP also strikes a monotonously querulous note. Add the presence of Zachary Hart’s dim-witted Detective Constable Mellor, who seems so wet behind the ears that it’s hard to believe he was ever allowed out of cadet school, and there’s a distinct lack of fireworks.
Director Matthew Warchus slows the pace even further with a string of oddly extended scene changes. Given that there’s little décor on Rob Howell’s set besides a desk and a few chairs (not to mention a large contingent of seated members of the audience) the delays seem all the more puzzling. The musical soundtrack, which includes the lugubrious sound of the Smiths, is lacklustre too. By the time Penhall delivers a final twist in the plot much of the tension had already seeped out of the auditorium.
★★☆☆☆
90 minutes
To August 10, oldvictheatre.com
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