IN MY NAME. To 19 July.

London.

IN MY NAME
by Steven Hevey.

Trafalgar Studios (Studio 2) To 19 July 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.45pm Mat Thu & Sat 3pm.
Runs 1hr 30min One interval.

TICKETS: 0870 060 6632.
www.theambassadors.com/trafalgarstudios
Review: Timothy Ramsden 12 July.

Slackers and attacker in derivative drama.
Young adults with ill-organised lives have been taking up residence at Trafalgar 2 recently. This time, it’s Grim, living with detritus round every piece of furniture, with the enigmatic Egg lodging to help pay the rent. And ethnic young Royal, who visits. Like Grim, he reaches instinctively for takeaways’ price-lists. But hardly anyone’s delivering today, for it becomes clear this is the day the bombs went off in London.

So what had seemed a slacker comedy (no wonder his girlfriend’s abandoned Grim’s gruesome flat) acquires serious overtones. Very serious ones when the only takeaway that’s open delivers food in a holdall brought by a heavily-bearded Middle East type. For which read Muslim; for which read terrorist.

That’s how Egg reads it anyway, as mental stress from his past turn the play into a hostage drama. And the hostage drama, in various contexts, is as well-worn a type as the slacker comedy. Maybe the original production of Steven Hevey’s play passed muster at Islington’s Old Red Lion, but revived with pace and efficiency, by Julia Stubbs in central London, the cracks in its make-up show.

There’s plenty of drama: tension, as when delivery-man Zaeem transforms into a quietly determined and vengeful terrorist haunting Egg’s disturbed mind (a crackling light-bulb signalling such moments). And, earlier, as tension’s still nudging its way through, there’s comedy, including an hilariously inventive use of the game Guess Who?

But Hevey doesn’t know what to do with his material once he’s laid it all out, suggesting it’s an idea derived from formula than something created from imagined, or actual, experience. Hence the sudden final violence; like that of Jacobean Tragedy but without the build-up of any sense of inevitability.

James Alexandrou is overstated in showing Grim’s lackadaisical lifestyle. The play’s driven by Kevin Watt’s fine performance as the post-traumatic Egg, simmering and boiling-over inside, then on the surface, clear-sighted about the detritus of Western decadence all around, yet rigid in his flag-erecting, foreigner-phobia mindset.

Ray Panthaki hits-off airhead Royal precisely in confident and fearful modes, while Adeel Akhtar is retrained yet forceful as the delivery-man haunting Egg’s fears.

Egg: Kevin Watt.
Grim: James Alexandrou.
Royal: Ray Panthaki.
Zaeem: Adeel Akhtar.

Director: Julia Stubbs.
Designer: Georgia Lowe.
Lighting: Richard Williamson.
Sound: David Glover.
Costume: Vicky Povey.
Fight coach: Ruth Cooper-Brown.

2008-07-13 12:38:35