A Hollywood film star, an English theatre director and a Northern Irish playwright gather in a living room. This sounds like the beginning of an old-fashioned joke, but it is instead the plot set-up of David Ireland’s black comedy, whose mission is to show up the absurdity of so much liberal pontificating. That the film star in question is played by actual Hollywood film star Woody Harrelson is a considerable boon.
Jay (Harrelson) is in London to take the lead in a play directed by Leigh (Andy Serkis). The two men meet in Leigh’s house the day before rehearsals are due to begin and what is delightfully evident from the start of Jeremy Herrin’s production is the easy but magnetic charisma of Harrelson, who is a force of nature. I never imagined that a smoothie could be drunk, or an orange eaten, with such potent wordless eloquence.
As Jay holds forth at length about his feminist credentials – “I benefit from the patriarchy, yet I am demeaned by it” – our suspicions, as well as Leigh’s doubts about his leading man, mount. Men who express such abstract admiration of women are rarely at their best when an actual female, with her own set of pesky opinions that may differ from theirs, arrives.
So it proves when the lively Ruth (Derry Girls‘ Louisa Harland) eventually joins the meeting, after a highly eventful journey from Belfast. Initially in awe of Jay’s star wattage, Ruth soon starts to become disillusioned.
Jay, it is revealed, has no clue about the political complexities of Northern Ireland – tricky given that Ruth’s play is set in Belfast – and his so-called “Irish” accent is appalling. As his behaviour worsens, Ruth’s protectiveness towards her script mounts. “He can only get away with this because he’s a movie star,” she says to Leigh. “You wouldn’t put up with it from Simon Russell Beale.”
Ireland is on strong ground when he is skewering the monstrous ego of celebrity, although Serkis overplays Leigh’s kowtowing to Jay. As Jay and Ruth harden in their stances, Leigh’s desperate vacillations between the pair, as well as his crude rank-pulling towards Ruth, come to seem ever more unconvincing.
Ireland increasingly opts for being heavy-handed and farcical where subtlety would have served him far better. The final 20 minutes of the 100-minute running time are nothing less than purgatorial.
A closing thought about ticket prices. Of course Harrelson is an Oscar-nominated star and Serkis another big name, but to ask up to £175 for uncomfortable meeting room-style seating in an Off-West End venue is absurd. British theatre is truly losing the plot if it thinks this sort of thing is sustainable.
To 28 January (ulsteramericanplay.com)