DEAD CERTAIN. To 10 August.

London

DEAD CERTAIN
by Marcus Lloyd

Old Red Lion To 10 August 2002
Tue-Sun 8pm
Runs 2hr 5min One interval

TICKETS 020 7837 7816
Review Timothy Ramsden 28 July

Plentiful well-played tension, if the script can't, in the end, quite live up to its aspirations.West End transfers from the Fringe are common enough; but here's a play (if not production) that's pretty soon gone from a main stage showing (at Windsor) to the Old Red Lion's intimacy. It brings a lack of the starchy theatrical correctness which larger theatres can engender in such suspense pieces, with a welcome immediacy between actors ad audience.

For his first act, and into the second, Lloyd has cunning mind-games to play. The suspense, as you begin predicting one of the cast will be, is killing. And the edge of one's seat is a perfectly respectable place to perch for an evening with a genre piece like this.

But Lloyd doesn't fully maintain the originality of his ideas, falling back on stereotype, the stand-by drunk scene and a conclusion recalling Richard Harris's popular contribution to the post-Sleuth puzzle play, The Business of Murder.

It's ironic that one character, Michael, an actor hired to play a character called Mike in a script about an actor hired to play a man called Mick, should share a full name with the newly-announced artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. This in a play where the other character denies the existence of coincidence.

She leads her visitor through a series of destabilising scenarios, recalling their previous meeting, as fan and understudy turned lead-player for a week, a meeting ending catastrophically for her. Both Mars and Kennedy give explosive performances, his pomposity soon clear in the early part where he seems in control, her inner conflict of anger, despair and confusion eventually forcing their way through her façade of polite inexperience in the theatre game.

Harry Wootliff's direction might have encouraged Kennedy to more variety in his increasingly inebriated state and Mars towards more menace as the climax nears. But these are points of detail. This is, for most of its course - until the script moves from puzzles to over-explicit exposition - strongly-played visceral stuff.

Elizabeth: Martina Mars
Michael: Tony Kennedy

Director: Harry Wootlif

2002-07-29 01:17:30