Stovepipe This is London

The new Westfield mall in Shepherds Bush may look tempting with its shiny shops and restaurants, but there are more substantial riches to be found beneath the older West 12 shopping centre just across the road. In collaboration with the National and BushTheatres, HighTide has taken over a basement space beneath a supermarket, transforming it into a post-war landscape full of conflict and contrasts.

Written by former journalist Adam Brace and given a striking, fluid, promenade production by Michael Longhurst, this involving, tense and well-researched new play looks at the world of the mercenary, the ex-soldiers who, via private military companies, sell their services – and perhaps their lives – for $600 a day.

A succession of drapes is stripped away to reveal location after location – from smart ‘Rebuild Iraq’ conference hall to the airport run where Eddie (Niall MacGregor) and ex-para Alan (Shaun Dooley) see their mate burnt to a crisp in an armoured vehicle, and from the subdued calm of a Welsh chapel to the swanky Amman hotel where Eddie picks up a Russian prostitute before disappearing without trace.

Unobtrusively ushered from scene to scene, the audience serves sometimes as extras populating the stages of Alan's search for his missing friend, sometimes more conventionally as mere onlookers.

The remaining four actors (including Eleanor Matsuura as a ball-busting entrepreneur and Sargon Yelda, equally impressive as her Iraqi interpreter) seamlessly swap accents and costumes to play an international cast of characters and, although the structure occasionally confuses, the dialogue, staging, performances and atmospheremake this subterranean journey well worth catching.

West 12, The Broadway, Shepherds Bush until 26th April




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