Patrick by Marmion Milk, two sugars and a dash of polonium, comrade?
A VERY EXPENSIVE POISON (Old Vic Theatre, London) Verdict: Slick but flippant docu-drama ★★★✩✩
AMSTERDAM (Orange Tree, Richmond-upon-Thames) Verdict: Double Dutch ★★✩✩✩
Alexander ‘ Sasha’ litvinenko was the russian exile who made the mistake of taking afternoon tea with a couple of old associates in Mayfair’s Millennium Hotel on november 1, 2006.
Shortly after this he fell violently ill and as he lay dying, he helped police solve his murder. retracing his steps, he eventually learned that his tea had been laced with radioactive polonium.
I wouldn’t have thought any of this would be obvious material for comic treatment, but that’s what it gets in this weirdly facetious new play by lucy Prebble.
It stars Tom Brooke as litvinenko, with Peter Polycarpou as the colourful oligarch Boris Berezovsky and reece Shearsmith as President Vladimir Putin — who was believed to have authorised the hit.
The play is based on luke Harding’s book about the killing and he takes lurid, sometimes breathless pleasure in the events. But Prebble’s adaptation turns the story into a wacky vaudeville affair, with Sasha and his wife Marina talking us through the action.
Far from being a sexy and mysterious spy, Brooke’s litvinenko is more of a gawky nicholas lyndhurst figure. He takes his role as the victim of a brutal state execution very seriously.
and, as an earnest teetotaller, litvinenko would surely have been unimpressed by Prebble’s frivolous obituary. at least Myanna Buring adds a good measure of seriousness as his loyal wife who fought for (and eventually won) a public inquiry into the killing.
The two assassins, andrei lugovoi and dimitri Kovtun, are mockingly presented as a couple of ‘useful idiots’, with Michael Shaeffer turning lugovoi into a petulant playboy and lloyd Hutchinson making Kovtun a half-witted wannabe porn star.
Shearsmith might at least have added menace as Putin, but he plays him as an irritable petty bureaucrat — nothing like the cold-blooded opportunist we know to occupy the Kremlin today. and as Berezovsky, Polycarpou is a big-hearted party animal given to bursting into song. again, no trace of the ruthless power-broker.
JOHN Crowley’ S production is always slick, with a small, neonframed café turning into a hospital room and a Moscow flat, before opening out into a vast incident room at Scotland yard. But comic capering with puppets, kitsch russian folk songs and half- cooked
choreography all set a decidedly odd tone for a real- life murder investigation.
I’m not sure I’d want my assassination reported like this, should I ever have the misfortune to cross Mr Putin.
AMSTERDAM, at the orange Tree Theatre in richmond, london, is billed as a thriller. don’t be deceived: it’s more of a snoozer. a new play by Israeli writer Maya arad yasur, it’s about a pregnant Jewish cellist in modern amsterdam who finds herself in receipt of an unpaid gas bill from 1944.
Four actors take turns to play the cellist, interrupting one another as they simultaneously investigate and concoct stories about the mysterious bill, which leads them to a nazi collaborator.
There’s nothing at stake: no characters, no action, no scenes and, robbed of all agency by the author, our cellist doesn’t even have a name. Colourless dialogue is given artificial life by director Matthew xia and his smiley cast are like teenagers co-presenting a school history project.
High points include using a typewriter to create the sound of heels on cobbles and an impressive iron curtain deployed to divide the stage (for no apparent reason). The show is at least innovative — but only in the way the rack was innovative in medieval england. and arad yasur certainly proves quite the expert at stretching out her very meagre material.
It’s no surprise that she’s big in Germany, where they like their drama painful. This is xia’s first venture as director of actors Touring Company. Be warned.