Drones, Baby, Drones - Review

Arcola Theatre, London


**

This Tuesday

Written by Ron Hutchinson and Christina Lamb

Directed by Nicolas Kent

The Kid

Written by David Greig

Directed by Mehmet Ergen

Anne Adams as Maxine

An evening of two short plays sandwiched between the verbatim thoughts of Reprieve’s Clive Stafford-Smith, Drones, Baby, Drones examines the psychologies at play behind the controllers of America's drone fleet. The texts look at both the Washington based elite who draw up the weekly hit lists for the missiles to be aimed at, and the pilots who actually fly the unmanned planes via remote control from an air force base just outside Las Vegas.

The first piece, This Tuesday is set in DC early one morning and is based around the build up to the White House weekly target meeting. The complexities set in as Maxine, a senior CIA official who is due to attend the meeting, learns of her daughter having been critically injured in a road crash (that's coincidentally witnessed by Meredith, the young intern/mistress of Doug, one of the Administration’s security advisers and another meeting attendee). The premise is clear, comparing Maxine’s love for her precious child with her disregard for the targetted victims, along with the associated collateral deaths, thousands of miles away. 

The second half's offering, The Kid, sees a social evening at the Nevada home of drone pilot Pete. His partner Shawna is newly pregnant and the joy and value in their unborn child is again contrasted with the lives of kids in the target zone. Intra-couple friction between the guests smoulders, sending the whole cheese and wine gig into a take on Who's Afraid Of Virginia Woolf mixed with a Stop The War meeting.

There are clearly sound dramatic and moral messages to be explored here, but both these plays' conceits are just too patronisingly obvious. Neither work is helped by Stafford-Smith's stated slant that all those involved in drone warfare, Britain's GCHQ included, are part of a modern-day Mafia.

Notwithstanding the cliched dialogue and blunt politicking. the acting is, for the most part excellent and Lucy Sierra’s design is imaginative. But the shows' arguments are naive and clumsy, lacking the precision of the Hellfire missiles that they're based around. Mercifully it’s all over in 90 minutes.

Runs until 26th November

Photo credit: Simon Annand

Sweet Smell of Success - Review

***

Music by Marvin Hamlisch

Lyrics by Craig Carnelia

Book by John Guare

Directed by Mehmet Ergen



Stuart Matthew Price



If the aromas of this country’s recent nasty episodes of cheque-book phone-tapping journalism could be distilled they might be ironically labelled the Sweet Smell of Success. This show from Marvin Hamlisch, he of blessed memory, is a thoroughly unpleasant tale of a morally bankrupt press, with a plot that includes almost flippant nods to McCarthyism, suggested incestuous motives, suicide and murder. There is a love interest , but it merely serves as second fiddle to the devious malfeasance that drives this work.

David Bamber is JJ Hunsecker, an influential New York columnist, with an unhealthily protective attitude towards his much younger sister Susan, played by Caroline Keiff. Whilst the immorality of the press has long been a rich seam for writers, Bamber’s character however loathsome is not a patch on the grotesque media baron that was Lambert Le Roux in David Hare's Pravda. Bamber’s acting is impressive but his singing disappoints and a second act vaudeville number, whose sole purpose seems to be that of providing Hunsecker with a big song and  dance routine, is an opportunity squandered. As Sidney Falcone, a protege of manipulative journalism whose character is ruthlessly manipulated by Hunsecker,  Adrian der Gregorian is frequently reduced to acting by simply shoulder shrugging.

To the show's credit, other performances shine. Stuart Matthew Price is masterful as Dallas, the young pianist in love with Susan. It is a delight to see this actor in a large “almost lead” role that for once offers his character numerous opportunities to sing solo, as his voice is simply divine. Similarly excellent is Celia Graham in the far too minor role of cigarette girl Rita. A highlight of the evening is the belting of her character’s one and solo number, Rita’s Tune. Wonderfully mopping up a handful of the minor scene-setting roles is Russell Morton, a young man of striking presence and potential. Hamlisch’s melodies are bold and jazzy and Bob Broad’s direction of his pitch perfect 7-piece band is a beautiful evocation of time and place.

Nathan M Wright’s choreography of the ensemble numbers lacked polish on press night. It was sometimes clumsy, and whilst expensive sets may not be expected in this fine off-West End establishment, foot-perfect dance routines are and Wright should urgently drill his cast further. Mehmet Ergen’s direction also denies his actors their full potential. The show’s staging is at times poorly thought out: a crucial beating takes place on a badly lit gantry, not easily visible to a proportion of the audience and a repeated gag of the chorus appearing from an upstage pit, wears thin with repetition.

In Jason Robert Brown’s Parade one song from a journalist, Real Big News, says more about a corrupt press than this show manages in two acts. If the cast and creative team can refine its weaker points, then this production stands a chance of generating a modest whiff of success.

Runs to December 22