THE DESTINY OF ME. To 17 August.

London

THE DESTINY OF ME
by Larry Kramer

Productions Absolute and Concordance at The Finborough Theatre To 17 August 2002
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 3.30pm
Runs 3hr Two intervals

TICKETS 020 7373 3842
Review Timothy Ramsden 25 July

Several strong performances in a decade-old play built around AIDS which still has plenty of force.Ned Weeks isn't going gentle into the long, bad night of AIDS. Heaped inside him is a complex mausoleum of defiance and hatred stretching back across his American Jewish family, and out into the right-wing government hospital where he's guinea pig for experimental treatment. It's what makes Larry Kramer's 1992 play, his second AIDS drama following The Normal Heart, a suspenseful, powerful drama. Especially when given the kind of searing production which, for much of the evening, fills the Finborough's tiny stage.

Even the black nurse who plugs Ned with drugs in no sister in the struggle, but the Republican doctor's wife. While they're trying to extend his life (with results all too predictable, given a decade's hindsight), radical gay activist Ned's natural allies are protesting outside the right-wing institution, unaware he's in there.

Young Alexander, with whom he's soon talking, is Ned's young self, seeking to know what awaits him. It's a device which links Destiny into American theatre tradition; especially, it recalls the family angers and disillusion in Death of A Salesman - though on a social level, the American dream's turned nightmarish by the nineties.

A lot of the play (by far the best-acted part) exists in mid-20th century recall. Young Alexander (he changed to Ned because Alexander the Great died young), was fond of his every-evening-some-good-works mother (Amanda Boxer, who mostly gives depth and intensity to her put-upon character). He idealised older brother Ben (a clean-scrubbed schoolboy hero from Russell Bentley, whose blinkered sympathy leads him to refer his gay brother for straightening out to a procession of useless psychiatrists).

With his father, Richard, there was eternal feuding. Kevin Colson gives a powerful portrayal of violent repugnance against his 'sissy' son, fuelled by the sense of his own failure, revealing on his deathbed the source of his hatred in his own father – a knowledge that brings no forgiveness from Ned.

Chris Andrew Mellon capably clarifies Ned's complexity, though he has some moments of generalised angst in later scenes. Drew Ackroyd keeps momentum up within scenes, often catching fluidly the inter-scene links of present and past, real and imaginary.

Ned Weeks: Chris Andrew Mellon
Nurse Hanniman: Iyabo Amoke
Dr Anthony Della Vida: Kevin Drury
Alexander Weeks: Daniel Hart
Richard Weeks: Kevin Colson
Rena Weeks: Amanda Boxer
Benjamin: Russell Bentley

Director: Drew Ackroyd
Designer: Rebecca Bevan
Lighting: Tom Cousins

2002-07-28 01:05:03