The Spoils Tickets

Jesse Eisenberg, who wrote this exceptional new play, stars as Ben, a fatally flawed character with an enormous ego, an academic failure who sponges off his rich parents rather than pay his own way. The Spoils delivers an uncanny insight into, “the mind of the destructive friend”, a story about how five young people survive in the big city, and one dysfunctional character who feels alienated enough to destroy all the good things that threaten his world view.

The Spoils – The story

Ben, played by Eisenberg, is from a wealthy background. He's downright unpleasant, a young man with an innate sense of entitlement which drives people nuts. He's narcissistic, selfish and difficult to deal with. Thrown out of college, he sponges off his parents rather than working for a living like everyone else. And he's a natural born bully. Nobody likes Ben. He even dislikes himself.

When Ben finds out the girl he's always had a crush on is about to marry a banker, a pleasant enough chap, he takes on a new mission – to destroy her relationship and win her back. And the results are painfully funny.

The play was written four years or so ago, and while it is a highly personal piece of work it isn't autobiographical. As Eisenberg confessed in a Guardian interview, “The feelings are real, the circumstances are not.” The intention was, apparently, to give creative birth to a bunch of characters – with Ben at their core – who are not easy to like, but who are made more sympathetic by the things that happen to them. Even the worst of us is, after all, human.

What can you expect? Eisenberg's keen sense of perfection means whatever night you see the play, you'll get the best out of him. As he says in The Guardian, “I treat every performance like it is the most important one. Every day to me is gearing up for the best performance I’ll ever do – even if it’s a Tuesday night and the house is half full, I still treat it like it’s the most important performance I’ll do in my life. I don’t know any other way to do it, I don’t know any shortcuts.”

Eisenberg has also written funny pieces for the New Yorker and his collection of short stories, Bream Gives Me Hiccups, is set to be translated into a pilot for TV. The Spoils previews from 27th May and runs until 13th August 2016.

The Spoils tickets – Painfully funny, wonderfully insightful

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