The dinner party from hell
DESSERT Southwark Playhouse, SE1
HOW much money does one human being need? It’s certainly an issue worth pondering, as is the vastly unequal distribution of wealth in this country. What is unpleasant, however, is to feel bludgeoned by a ponderous play tackling these questions. Good drama should wear its weighty issues lightly and pack its punches cleanly. Dessert, by actor-cum-playwright Oliver Cotton, deserts these precepts and is instead a cut-price An Inspector Calls for the credit-crunch era.
We’re in the grand dining room of British financier Hugh (Michael Simkins) and his wife Gill (Alexandra Gilbreath) as they host equally wealthy American friends. Art collector Hugh is boasting of the Old Master painting he has bought when the lights go off, the phone goes dead and in bursts gun-wielding amputee soldier Eddie (Stephen Hagan), determined to hold Hugh to account.
Eddie is also — of course he is — an art connoisseur and what follows is a strange hybrid of hostage drama and situation comedy. Odd conversational digressions keep allowing any built-up tension to drain away and long gobbets of shoutiness about the unfairness of the capitalist system are just hard work. The men do the lion’s share of the talking and the women develop unlikely glimmers of conscience.
Trevor Nunn’s uneven production is boosted by strong work from Hagan, who overrides the character’s implausibilities to give Eddie clear-eyed charisma and Simkins, who manages a fine line in clenched self-righteousness. Nonetheless, it’s a bit of a thankless slog.
Until Aug 5 (020 7407 0234, southwarkplayhouse.co.uk)