A PRAYER FOR MY DAUGHTER. To 15 March.
London.
A PRAYER FOR MY DAUGHTER
by Thomas Babe.
Young Vic To 15 March 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat & 13, 27 Feb, 12 March 2.30pm.
Audio-described 12 March 2.30pm.
Captioned 4 March.
Runs 2hr 10min One interval.
TICKETS: 020 7922 2920.
www.youngvic.org
Review: Timothy Ramsden 11 February.
Tough-talking crime drama explores psyches in a way now seeming rather predictable.
Perhaps the Young Vic’s triumphant series of Christmas shows has left them feeling buoyant enough the last couple of Februaries to mount over-designed in-house revivals of middling plays.
Thomas Babe’s 1978 urban American cop-drama has neither the lumbering length nor the tedious complexity of Thomas Otway’s Soldier’s Fortune, seen this time last year. Nor is Giles Cadle’s set as monstrously inapposite as that production’s auditorium-devouring layout.
But an emotionally intense drama needing tight claustrophobia (Babe resembles its downtown squad-room setting to “a toilet-bowl”) is set on a narrow traverse open to steep banks of audience either side, with (barely-used) steps leading up two floors. Maybe the idea was to suggest a subterranean hellhole, but the impact is big and spacious.
Even 30 years ago it’s surprising if Babe’s depiction of policemen as troubled people barely this side of the law, or using their office to protect their illegality, was unusual – though it might still have seemed convincing as gritty reality, rather than predictable to have one cop a junkie, the other alcoholic, and to have a sergeant willing to knock a confession out of a suspect.
Any suspect. The fact an old woman’s been killed often seems less important than getting a confession from either criminal to say which of them fired the shot. The trauma, the unsettled state of post-Vietnam males seen in the older suspect Sean (Sean Chapman, skilfully wheedling and manipulating with soft-voiced suggestiveness), the sexuality of the prisoners which challenges police machismo, seem like themes the playwright’s determined to develop, rather than emerging from the characters and situation as the plotting-by-numbers conveniently removes two characters at a time to allow the others to engage each other.
Only the strand that gives the title really works out. Tough-talking Kelly shies from his daughter’s despair, keeping it a telephone-call away as he refuses to abandon his case, which becomes his shield against personal involvement.
The suddenly quiet end seems forced, but till then the performances, Dominic Hill’s urgent direction and Cadle’s set capturing the tatty post-party room, at least give energy to events that still struggle to convince.
Kelly: Matthew Marsh.
Jack: Corey Johnson.
Jimmy: Colin Morgan.
Sean: Sean Chapman.
Director: Dominic Hill.
Designer: Giles Cadle.
Lighting: Bruno Poet.
Music: Dan Jones.
Dialect coach: Penny Dyer.
Assistant director: David Dorrian.
Sound associate: Sarah Weltman.
2008-02-18 01:25:26