23.5 Hours – Park Theatre, London

Writer: Carey Crim

Director: Katharine Farmer

We hear much about criminals and their victims, but little about the collateral damage that crimes cause to families and friends of alleged offenders. Award-winning American playwright Carey Crim enters this sensitive area with 23.5 Hours, an examination of how a small group living in America’s Mid-West responds when one of them, allegedly, commits a sex crime.

The play opens with two married couples – Tom and Leigh, Bruce and Jayne – celebrating after a successful school production of Romeo & Juliet, which Tom, a drama teacher, has directed. Bruce is aghast that the show ran for two hours and 48 minutes, but the mood is convivial and we get a picture of a wholesome All-American community in which everyone lives in perfect harmony with everyone else. And then the telephone rings.

The lights dim, followed by loud bangs and bright flashes as, for the first time, we see that understatement will not be a prominent feature of this production. Does the play’s title mean that the characters are half an hour away from the end of the world? Well not exactly. Scene two sees the same four gathered to welcome home Tom upon his release from prison, having served time for, allegedly, behaving inappropriately with his Juliet.

Tom (David Sturzaker) faces a mixed reception. His wife Leigh (Lisa Dwan) believes in his innocence for 23.5 hours every day and defends him resolutely, even though banishing him to sleep on the sofa. Bruce (Jonathan Nyati), a fellow teacher, defends him unreservedly, but Jayne (Allyson Ava-Brown) is convinced of his guilt. Tom’s teenage son Nicholas (Jem Matthews) takes to drugs and staying out all night. His relationships strained, his career and reputation in tatters, Tom soldiers on.

The writer always seems more interested in detailing the problems facing the characters, rather than exploring in-depth their inner emotion and their relationships. The story’s central perspective needs to be that of Leigh, the wife left with just a smidgeon of doubt, but, as played by Dwan, she is volatile and foul-tempered, thereby repelling empathy. More generally, director Katharine Farmer favours hysterics where subtlety may have yielded a stronger impact. Her approach does not serve the play well. Although Crim makes many intelligent points about the dilemmas being faced, the characters and their situations are not made to be wholly convincing and some lines of dialogue become unexpectedly risible.

The play should have been a thoughtful and revealing study of human behaviour under stress, but, in this production, it ends up as just a trite drama, overblown, overwrought and overlong.

Runs until 5 October 2024