The Haystack
Hampstead Theatre, London NW3 (020-7722 9301). Until 7 March Running time: 2hrs 45mins
★★★★
This first-rate debut play by Al Blyth, a former economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, is a “gripping thriller” centred on two clever young “geeks” working at GCHQ, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Zef and Neil are tasked with finding out how Cora, a Guardian journalist, is getting her scoops about Middle East politics. And the plot thickens when Neil moves from eavesdropping on Cora’s life to insinuating himself into it, and the journalist disappears. The piece “fizzes with wit, buzz-words and teched-up references”. It plays out as a “dark, twisty love-story with complex ethical and intellectual ramifications”: what is the right balance between state surveillance and individual freedom in the age of terrorism? If protecting the public demands “technological omniscience”, doesn’t this mean the end of democracy? These are the questions at the heart of The Haystack, a play that’s so good it deserves packed houses and a future life as a TV spin-off.
I, too ,was highly impressed by this “pacy, brainy surveillance thriller”, said Mark Lawson in The Guardian, though initially it is a bit too reliant on video wizardry. However, director Roxana Silbert’s high-energy staging turns “searingly theatrical” when the double lives of spies are dramatised by having characters conduct multiple conversations simultaneously. John le Carré himself
“might admire” some of the ensuing exchanges and set-ups. Blyth’s dialogue is “spiky, salty and very funny”, said Alun Hood on What’s On Stage. And it is well-served by the brilliant acting: Enyi Okoronkwo is “hilarious then chilling” as Zef; playing Neil, Oliver Johnstone is quite “terrific”; Rona Morison is riveting as Cora; and Sarah Woodward delivers a “magnificent” turn as the “allegedly humane” face of GCHQ.
I have a few reservations, said Marianka Swain on The Arts Desk. In the overlong first half there were so many “genre clichés” it felt as if we were playing “spy thriller bingo”. But the sizzling second half, featuring “several gasp-inducing reveals”, is urgent, unsettling and wholly persuasive: “a microcosmic, human example of a well-meaning nation losing itself entirely”.