Slick but sick, the show where Hooray Henrys shoot Scousers
Game (Almeida Theatre) Verdict: Sub-Orwellian satire
SLY shock value is the deal down at Islington’s modish almeida theatre.
It has come up with a sub-Orwellian story about prosperous southerners standing behind two-way mirrors, shooting tranquiliser darts at a working-class Liverpudlian couple and their seven- year- old child. ah, great — a ‘sexy’ play glamorising cruelty to minors. Just what we needed this week.
the Scousers are unable to find work elsewhere (the play must have been conceived before the recent tory-led employment boom).
they allow themselves to be shot because they receive a free house and income from the theme-park company which runs the operation. Its site manager, an ex-soldier (Kevin harvey), becomes uneasy about the whole business.
the paying snipers are hooray henrys, a hen party, a rightwing teacher and a bickering husband and wife. these citizens have been brutalised by our culture of voyeurism and fantasised violence.
the whole thing is showily high-tech. the audience sits behind the two-way mirror, alongside the snipers, and there is some silly malarkey with computer graphics and a Stephen hawking-style voice welcoming us to the show. We listen to the dialogue via earphones. the sound quality and viewing experience is similar to Tv’s Big Brother.
Playwright Mike Bartlett may have a point about the voyeuristic seediness of parts of 21st-century Britain. If he is attacking Big Brother (whose original British producer, a grotesque of modern life, is now chairman of the arts Council), good on him.
Sadly, he does not lay his finger on the culprits of this moral decay. If he did, he might upset the very Islingtonian neophiles who fawn over the almeida.
Character and humanity are neglected while our attention keeps being grabbed by gimmickry. New, new, new: that is the imperative, as voices talk over one another on either side of the mirrors.
a sub-theme about posttraumatic stress is woefully under- explored. and the audience may struggle to establish a connection with t he unfortunate couple (convincingly played by Mike Noble and Jodie McNee).
each time they are shot they fall unconscious to the ground. Mr Noble does an impressive fall from a staircase. Miss McNee’s character, Carly, is shot while she is making love to her husband. Oh look — she’s showing us a bare breast! how titillating! Yum yum!
But who is the voyeur here: the snipers or the audience? Mr Bartlett may have been intending to skewer both, but I’m afraid I felt the almeida — run these days by self-basting rupert Goold — was trying to have i t both ways. this production is slick but sick.