OK, so maybe I’m just thick, but I left this play thinking ‘so what is it you’re trying to say?’
Joe Pentall has written some good plays, amongst them the excellent Blue, Orange. Mental health is an issue he returns to often. In this play, husband / father Douglas disappears, seemingly for no reason. When he returns ,we discover he’s been with some sort of cult – or has he? He disappears again and when he returns this time he seems to be even more under the spell of an increasingly implausible group. His wife Julie is losing her tether and his son Thomas misses dad badly. It’s two hours before we discover the truth.
Sophie Okonedo is excellent and the young actor who played Thomas was terrific. Bunny Christie’s set is a perfectly realised family home, except the ceiling twice lowers mysteriously and somewhat pointlessly…. but what on earth the play is getting at is beyond me. I didn’t find it in the slightest bit illuminating, thought-provoking or even interesting. Ben Daniels seemed to be over-acting mercilessly, though in all fairness, I’m not sure how anyone could play Douglas believably.
Sadly, the Royal Court ends 2011 on a low. For me, a waste of an evening, I’m afraid.