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Evcol Entertainment in association with the Hackney Empire
Collision
by Dominic Leyton
Simon James Collier directing
Hackney Empire Studio
3 - 21 November, 2009
A review by James Hogg for EXTRA! EXTRA!
Much is made on the posters and blurbs of this play by writer Dominic Leyton of how this one act play occurs in ‘real time’. There’s a film version of the play called Sugerhouse, made a couple of years ago with some big names in the cast, and what with the foyer warns of live gunshots and depictions of knife crime, so I was expecting a gritty slice-of-London-life drama, complete with gangsters, drugs, hoodies and all the Guy Ritchie overtones that conjures up for me. It might not be entirely what it says on the tin, but it’s very enjoyable all the same. Tom is from a boarding school and has had all the advantages life could throw at him; somehow, he winds up trying to buy a gun from a coke fiend called D, somewhere in a squat by King’s Cross. D owes a local thug called Hoodwink money, and Hoodwink is less than pleased when he accidentally discovers what the gun-running D is doing on the side. All three, in the confines of the run-down flat, are set at loggerheads, and none of them have anywhere to go other than at each others’ throats. It’s a good set up for a tense thriller. Which, is why it’s pretty unexpected that much of the play goes in a different direction, instead offering a well-observed mid-life crisis that’s almost The Odd Couple in places, managing to be funny and poignant in equal turns, before pitching back into the crime drama that got you in the door in the first place. Curtis Flowers is completely convincing as the wired D, scuffling pathetically with his habit, ticking and stuttering through the action as his brain struggles to keep on track long enough to survive. One minute he’s sniggering as he explains to Tom how to treat women right, the next he’s snivelling under the heels of Hoodwink, the next he’s bringing a desperate nobility to the wretchedness of his life. He’s supported by a cruel and dapper Hoodwink from Munro Graham, a charming man more than capable of sudden eruptions of violence, and Tim Faulkner’s Tom, who’s desperately out of his depth in a world he doesn’t remotely understand. The set, awash with litter, peeling paint and shabby carpet, is a perfect backdrop, and the sound is also excellent - I was never a hundred percent sure if the sirens I could occasionally hear in the background were part of the sound, or real ones from outside. It’s all compelling stuff. I confess I didn’t quite buy the story, especially after the whole ‘real time explosive intensity’ sell on the door. If middle-class Tom really is in the mess he’s supposed to be in, he seems a little too comfortable than the situation would seem to demand, and a little too ready to trade lifestyle anecdotes cosily with a crazed cokehead. Getting him to spend five minutes or so in the loo in order that some plot exposition may take place between the other two is an example of what might feel a little contrived in a poorer production. This isn’t ‘real time,’ it’s a theatrical version of it. But I still enjoyed it, and coming out into the chilly and empty streets of Hackney, I realised I’d been convinced - it was all too easy to imagine these three characters being out there somewhere, wandering the night.
Box office 020 8985 2424 £14 tickets, £11 concessions, £7.50 in groups of ten or more Hackney Empire Studio Theatre
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