Amongst Friends ** TNT
It’s not just Richard and Lara’s dinner party which goes seriously off the rails with the arrival of an unexpected interloper who hijacks April De Angelis’s new play and sends it crashing into the realms of the ludicrous. It makes you wonder whether the cast – most of whom are familiar TV faces and more than competent stage actors – bothered to read the script past the first few pages.
High up in their posh east London minimalist flat, safely located within a gated complex, deselected New Labour MP turned novelist Richard and Lara (his agoraphobic tabloid columnist wife) are playing host to former neighbours - breast-care nurse Caitlin and drug counsellor Joe. There’s been virtually no contact between them since their acrimonious parting six years ago when the financially upwardly mobile couple moved away. Into this tense reunion barges working class Shelley, demanding large sums of money to fund a youth centre in memory of her deceased lout of a son, and blaming each of them for his early demise.
De Angelis is trying to make a point about the destructive isolation which comes with perceived security, and the inequity of an uncaring society divided by wealth and class. But this is a seriously disappointing mess of a play in need of a serious rewrite – and no amount of killer-heeled contempt from Helen Baxendale’s uptight, immaculate Lara, nor more-than-decent performances (Aden Gillett’s self-serving Richard, James Dreyfus’s cynical Joe and Emma Cunniffe’s earth motherly Caitlin) could possibly rescue it in its current predictable, implausible state.
Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue, NW3 3EU (020 7722 9301) until June 13 (£15-£25 -under 26’s £10)
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