THE VIEWING ROOM. To 29 March.

London.

THE VIEWING ROOM
by Daniel Joshua Rubin.

Arts Theatre 6/7 Great Newport Street WC2H 7JB To 29 March 2008.
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 3pm.
Runs 1hr 50min One interval.

TICKETS: 0844 847 1608.
www.artstheatrelondon.com
Review: Timothy Ramsden 8 March.

One performance has the life this play generally lacks.
For someone who’s housebound, home can seem like a prison. But Daniel Joshua Rubin takes a different slant on the idea, supposing America asks its citizens (presumably after they’ve passed a decency test to ensure they’re worthy of such trust) to keep a prisoner in a temporary lock-up in their front rooms.

Not only that; the same citizens can be required to administer a lethal injection when appropriate to dispatch the prisoner from their living-quarters, and indeed the world. Even liberal-minded folk like Brian and his wife. They’re city-dwellers (how the system might operate, if at all, in rural areas is one place Rubin doesn’t go). And she is more repelled by the idea than he.

It sounds, and looks, far-fetched. But there’s evidently a war of some sort going on, something as vague as a War on Terror, no doubt, though the precise terms of the conflict aren’t laid-out. And in such a world, it’s hard to say anything is too outlandish for consideration.

Yet Rubin and director A C Wilson don’t sell this as having the likelihood which would ground the characters in reality. Kyle Carter’s presence in the Walkers’ living-room cage is too new to have sunk into routine, but there’s too little of the uncertainty, anxiety or suppressed panic that would be around if it were still novel.

James Flynn and Samantha Wright handle their roles competently without creating a strong sense of normality in this altered environment, or a sense of living on the edge of society’s collapse. Only Leonard Roberts, the black criminal incarcerated in this White couple’s lifestyle, has a due sense of urgency.

Patrolling his small space like a large caged beast in a zoo, forming a kind of human contact with the wife in her husband’s absence, fearful at hearing of the well-ordered way he is to be disposed of, Carter becomes a vivid presence while the other two remain ciphers to the plot.

Overall, Wilson’s production needed to take a bolder way with the play’s mix of realism and fantasy to make give its unlikely situation the conviction lacking here.

Kyle Carter: Leonard Roberts.
Brian Walker: James Flynn.
Brian’s Wife: Samantha Wright.

Director: A C Wilson.
Designer: Alex Marker.
Lighting: Peter Harrison.
Sound: Joel Cohen.
Costume: Fabrice Serafino.
Assistant director: Mel Cook.

2008-03-17 12:34:04