THE FASTEST CLOCK IN THE UNIVERSE To 14 November.
London/Leicester.
THE FASTEST CLOCK IN THE UNIVERSE
by Philip Ridley.
Hampstead Theatre To 17 October.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 3pm & 7 Oct 2.30pm.
Audio-described 3 Oct 3pm.
Captioned 6 Oct.
Post-show Discussion 6 Oct.
TICKETS: 020 7722 9301.
www.hampsteadtheatre.com
then 22 October-14 November 2009.
Tue-Sat 7.45pm except 27 Oct 7pm
Runs 2hr 20min One interval.
TICKETS: 0116 242 3595.
www.curveonline.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 22 September at Hampstead Theatre.
Welcome back to the abattoir.
A lot’s happened since Hampstead Theatre premiered Philip Ridley’s play in 1992. For one, there’s a new Hampstead Theatre, allowing a notably greater sense of space in Mark Thompson’s design, its huge walls, doors and windows dwarfing the inhabitants of the upstairs East End room where Cougar Glass is set to hold his latest single-guest birthday party.
Meanwhile, 2005 saw Ridley’s Mercury Fur at Southwark’s Menier Theatre, a play taking to extremes both the dark, mind-enclosed world of Fastest Clock and its violence; eventually explicit, with yet more implied (in Mercury and Edward Dick’s revival of Clock, the intended victim is Asian in an otherwise Caucasian cast).
With its animal overtones – Cougar and Cheetah hardly suggest a cuddly world, though she’s the one person able to calm Cougar’s rages when he’s reminded he’s older than the 19th birthday he claims to be celebrating – and the prominent knife surely intended for more than a birthday cake, violence looms in action and dialogue.
From the start there’s tension, and a struggle for control between self-bronzing beauty Cougar (the dangers of sun-lamps is something else that’s come to light in intervening years, making this a kind of self-laceration in the name of image) and the older, besotted yet critical Captain Tock..
Surprise element in the gay ménage is party-guest Foxtrot’s girl-friend, whose apparently facile surface doesn’t conceal her control over him, while her loud presence smilingly skews events till she reveals the battle-lines she’s drawn-up ready to face Cougar.
Brick Lane may be outside, like the birds that cause Cougar to scream. But Ridley’s characters are caged in their own interiors, as director Dick makes clear. Performances are crystal-clear and top-notch, Jaime Winstone’s Sherbert comically forceful especially when her Esury vowels can be deciferd, Neet Mohan the enthusiastic teenage straight guy to Alec Newman’s quietly-coiled Cougar, with his predatory smile at the younger man.
And supremely, Finbar Lynch’s Tock, drawn to Cougar yet repelled by his behaviour, subtly inflects each moment of speech or silence, to his final, quiet “Hallelujah” when, surprisingly, the younger (though not young) man seems to get the point.
Cougar Glass: Alec Newman.
Captain Tock: Finbar Lynch.
Foxtrot Darling: Neet Mohan.
Cheetah Bee: Eileen Page.
Sherbet Gravel: Jaime Winstone.
Director: Edward Dick.
Designer: Mark Thompson.
Lighting: Rick Fisher.
Sound: Adrienne Quartly.
Movement: Jane Gibson.
Dialect coach: Majella Hurley.
Fight director: Bret Yount.
Assistant director: Drew Mulligan.
2009-09-24 10:17:28