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An Audience With The Mafia

Directed by Keith Strachan

Apollo Theatre

21 January to 16 February 2008

Shadowy, secretive, prone to acts of indisputable madness – I suppose the mafia are more or less as scary as Michael Jackson these days, though you’d be forgiven for erring on the side of the eccentric pop star on viewing the Apollo’s latest. An Audience With The Mafia, a stop-gap production between Glengarry Glen Ross and Sir Peter Hall’s anticipated revival of The Vortex, is a woefully tepid affair, which aims to resurrect the mob’s massive body count, from the early days of the American Mafia, through prohibition era United States, and numerous mafia related conflicts in the first part of the twentieth century.

Viewed across three large LCD screens (which went kaput about two-thirds of the way through as it happens), the show lazily recalls such grizzly characters as Al Capone, ‘Lucky’ Luciano, Meyer Lansky, ‘Bugsy’ Siegel, and ‘Dutch’ Schultz. It even has the audacity to include Marilyn Monroe and John F. Kennedy among its cast list in the programme notes when, in fact, this dull two-hour performance runs as a sort of pseudo university lecture.

Written and narrated by the not-so-mysterious Mercy Man, a nameless British-Israeli actor (I use the term loosely), its tame action is bookmarked by irritating media clips and cameo appearances by actress Nicole Faraday (the show’s only redeeming aspect), who occasionally steps in to play the women of the relevant eras. We’re taken labourously through the crimes of Al Capone, the death of Marilyn Monroe, you name it, pretty much every mob conspiracy theory going.

Safe to say, the production is over-long, mind-numbingly dull and has many, many flaws, not least its leading operative, a man so devoid of the natural charisma required for this kind of performance that he ends up conjuring some cringe-worthy, awkward mannerisms that leave you wondering where on earth they got him from. Clearly he is no professional actor, but struggles to hold the audience’s attention even for five minutes at a time – which, of course, is unforgivable for the paying punters of the West End.

Likewise, the set is dull too. So are the costumes. As is the lighting, the contrived direction by Keith Strachan, and the predictable, grating soundtrack. All round, An Audience With The Mafia makes for a miserable way to spend a theatre trip.

Put it this way: at the start of the evening, a camera crew buzzed around the theatre, as did the inevitable glut of D-list celebrities. By the interval, the D-listers were nowhere to be found (Vanessa Feltz didn’t even last a half hour), and the camera crew had stopped taking pictures.