CLEVER DICK. To 17 June.

London

CLEVER DICK
by Crispin Whittell

Hampstead Theatre To 17 June 2006
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm
Audio-described 10 June 3pm
Captioned 12 June
Post-show discussion 6 June
Runs 2hr 5min One interval

TICKETS: 020 7722 8301
www.hampsteadtheatre.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 24 May

Some historical characters, a fictional story and an uneasy play.
Some plays, you can turn up late without much harm. But best not miss the opening minutes of this one. You’ll hear a man vomit, see him attempt to hang himself before frenetically undressing and pulling himself into bed. Then a young woman enters, takes some clothes off and dives for the same bed. That’s when the dialogue begins.

Yet it’s a sign of the problem with Crispin Whittell’s new play that it doesn’t matter too much if you miss this frenzied opening. The action, like much busy-ness throughout, isn’t keenly enough plugged into the play’s point for things to cohere or ignite. It soon emerges this is the time and place of the early US A-bomb experiments, and that atom security is an issue. But Whittell’s throwing together of an atom worker, a security man, a film-struck scion of the Hilton hotel family and an innocent young local lady doesn’t have the combustibility or fusion of the atom-related quartet brought together in Terry Johnson’s Insignificance, at once more funny and more serious.

Being a clever dick isn’t easy in British Theatre these days, alongside Johnson plus the senior voices of Stoppard and Frayn, who all invent more inventively than this (Whittell ends up resorting to a comic nun, for goodness’ sake), with far more concision and purpose. The best moments (which are sadly few) occur after the interval, though the farcical action still lumbers.

But some good lines come along, plus a neat theatrical coup from stunt devisor Richard Bradshaw. And there’s a warmth to the ending, with its reading from Lady Chatterley’s Lover (a nicely ironical choice of novel for its part in the play) by the still virginal Matilda, Whittell's least sophisticated, least self-aware and most sensible character; her love of toads would be anoraky in anyone more modern and less attractive.

Perhaps a different director, experienced in comedy, could have shaped the material better. But the play would probably still seem a pale shade of the master comedy plotters, the work of someone who has followed their outlines without reaching the heart of the matter.

Richard Feynman: Adrian Rawline
Matilda: Jennifer Higham
Fat Man: Corey Johnson
Little Boy: Jamie King
Nun: Jenny Gleave

Director: Crispin Whittell
Designer: Michael Taylor
Lighting: Chris Davey
Sound: Gregory Clarke
Dialect coaches: Rick Lipton, Joan Washington
Stunt director: Richard Bradshaw
Assistant director: Kathryn Ind

2006-05-25 07:44:04