The plays of Alexi Kaye Campbell have been essential viewing in London Theatre since he first came to prominence with his play, PRIDE, at the Royal Court which hauntingly contrasted gay life in the 1950s with today.Act one is set outside a picturesquely dilapidated Greek farm house on an idyllic island. Nerdy playwright type Theo and his quick tempered wife Charlotte are holidaying whilst Theo writes a new play. Bored of each other's company they invite an overbearing American couple over for drinks. The woman is a ditzy trophy wife and the man is a shadowy diplomat and adept at getting his own way; he persuades the Brits to buy the property, offered at a knock down price, from a local family who are desperate for a quick sale to finance their emigration.
Just before the interval the democratically elected government of Greece is over thrown by the military and the diplomat looks shifty.
In Act two the American couple are back for a visit, nine years later, and the playwrights’ family, including their adorable young children, are thinking of selling up. But like an Ibsen play there's been consequences to the decisions made in the first half. The diplomat isn't as self assured after the misguided US backroom intervention in the overthrow of Chile's democratic regime and we learn that the off stage Greek family have not fared well in their new country.
The revelations aren't terribly revelatory, even the mouse I saw running around the Dorfman Theatre in the interval could have predicted them but it's great to see a contemporary playwright using the "well made play" format which allows conversations and relationships to develop and deepen in real time on one set as opposed to short, sharp little scenes in various locations.
Sam Crane as Theo makes for a rather insipid patriarch. Pippa Nixon makes his wife alienatingly spiky; all mood swings and bony angular limbs in her beach ware but in both cases that's the point of their characters, although it does make it rather hard to care about them.
As the crass, sometimes sinister Americans Elizabeth McGovern from TV’s DOWNTON ABBEY is a treat as the wife, tottering around the stage in a blonde wig, on high wedged shoes, in a haze of sangria fumes, she steals every moment she's on stage. The greatest compliment I can pay to the excellent Ben Miles as her husband is that he makes the alpha male spell he casts, entirely beguiling and persuasive.
The big problem is that it's all so interesting that you long for an additional third act that deals with Greece's current economic meltdown as we all consider our continued membership of the EU.
Without this it all feels a little incomplete and like an opportunity missed.
1984 is one of those novels that everyone thinks they’ve read, perhaps because we are constantly reminded, by commentators from across the political spectrum, how Big Brother is always watching us, whether Big Brother is the spooks, the marketers or the EU. So, despite being nearly70 years old, it’s a tale that always seems contemporary and politically relevant.