LANDSCAPE WITH WEAPON - This is London
Cottesloe Theatre

The moral responsibility of the scientist comes into question in Joe Penhall's latest play in which two brothers - Dan (a dentist with kids, a mortgage and dubious plans to augment his income with a Botox clinic) and Ned (a childless, recently separated, weapons engineer who is gagged by the official secrets act from discussing his work) - come into conflict. Though Ned is quick to criticise Dan's decision to branch out from the confines of his profession, it is his own choices which prove seriously problematic. Naively, he has assumed that he can maintain control over his ground-breaking invention (an unmanned air vehicle able to navigate with frightening precision) despite the fact that his employers want to do a deal with the Ministry of Defence.
The traverse staging emphasises the divergence between the brothers, as well as the battlefield between Ned and his employers who resort to calling in MI6 (in the shape of Jason Watkins' smiling Brooks, menacingly rolling up his sleeves to get down to business) to persuade him to relinquish the intellectual property rights.
Despite Tom Hollander's convincingly boffin-like performance, Ned's credulity is hard to swallow. One can accept that his fascination with the ‘beauty’ of his work might blinker him to some degree, but surely not to the extent that he could believe that – patent or not – he would be allowed to control the use to which his drones would ultimately be put. Julian Rhind-Tutt's Dan makes an entertaining foil, revealing precise comic timing as well as a growing concern for his disintegrating sibling. And although not quite in the same league as Penhall's earlier ‘Blue/Orange’, the excellent acting in Roger Michell's well-realised production ensures that the issues raised are consistently interesting.

Louise Kingsley