Ordinarily, the winning combination of a new David Hare play with the presence of a bona fide movie star like Ralph Fiennes assuming its lead role, would set pulses racing and box office tills ringing. But whilst the run may have virtually sold-out before it opened due to the star’s cachet, the piece is something of a didactic dirge with only momentary flashes of levity and pathos. It’s a far cry from the playwright’s heady power-output of “Racing Demon”, “Amy’s View”, “Plenty” and “Pravda”, which now feel like very distant successes by comparison.
Dani Moseley as Carol Amis in Straight Line Crazy at the Bridge Theatre. Photo by Manuel Harlan.
When brothers Tobias and Steve learn that their mother was patient zero in a world now possessed of flesh-eating zombies, they are forced to patch their differences whilst caring for her and fending-off the seemingly endless onslaught from those outside wanting to get in.