GAGARIN WAY by Gregory Burke. Cottesloe Theatre in rep to 31 January.

National Theatre

GAGARIN WAY
by Gregory Burke

Cottesloe Theatre in rep to 31 January 2002
Runs 1hr 35min No interval

TICKETS 020 7452 3000
Review Timothy Ramsden 12 December

Trasnsfer to Arts Theatre to 4 May 2002
Tickets 020 7836 3334

Red on red with a bloody, black-humoured hostage drama in a land of lost ideals.It's easy to see why Gregory Burke's debut script became the soaraway success of 2001's Edinburgh Fringe. Even so, few such plays open already scheduled for the National. And when they resurface, it's usually just autumn's cooler critical judgments they have to face. This play has to slot in to a whole new view of the world.

Yet September 11's terrorism from the sky has little in common with Burke's hapless bloodletters. They have no practical world vision, merely a romantic itch for old socialist certainties. In Eddie's home-town Lumphinanns they went on electing a communist to Westminster long after the rest of the country had given up; but all there is to show for the old blazing convictions is one of many streets named after Soviet heroes.

So here he is, holed up in an anonymous outpost of international capitalism, an industrial unit anywhere in urban Scotland. Burke parallels the anonymity by slaloming through a variety of apparent situations. Something irregular's going on, but it's a time before the prickly chat about existentialism dissolves into class hate between Eddie's eager book-learned worker and Tom, the graduate slumming it as a security guard before a job opportunity pops him back up with the bourgeoisie.

It's a while before their purpose is clear to us – and Tom only finds out by the slightest accident what he's really let himself in for. The result is bloody, the explosion of human chemistry when political action becomes suffused in nihilism.

Once comedy-thrillers were cosy things, but Burke's way the laughs just seal the action in deep-freeze. And the edgy, speedy dialogue sends the temperature plummeting towards absolute zero. John Tiffany's alert all the way to the script's depth charges and his on-stage quartet are testimony to the strength of Scottish acting.

Gary: Billy McElhaney
Tom: Michael Moreland
Eddie: Michael Nardone
Frank: Maurice Roeves

Director: John Tiffany
Designer: Neil Warmington
Lighting: Chahine Yavroyan
Composer: Mick Slaven

2002-01-17 04:19:21