Writer: Lucas Hnath
Director: Matthew Dunster
The audience enters the auditorium to the dulcet tones of Roy Orbison promising us that anything we want, we Got It. And then as the show goes up, the volume is cranked up and up and up. The speakers distort, the drummer sounds like he’s operating a machine press, and Roy could be the new frontman for Aerosmith. It’s very unsettling. Which is, of course, the point.
This is a play about sporting achievement built on doping. It’s about exploitation and reputation and brotherhood. It’s about ignorance and self-belief, and getting a contract with a swim-wear manufacturer that will result in your own personalised product line and big cash rewards.
It’s as though Abbott and Costello developed a 90-minute crosstalk routine around drugs in sport and real ethical dilemmas. It’s fast and furious, the cast is very accomplished, the Olympic swimming pool is represented by a paddling pool-sized trench which turns out to be all you need, and it is all wrapped up with a proper slapstick battle. Domestic, small-scale, but with enough weird distortions to make it unsettling.
It’s great fun to watch. Skillfully played at a thousand miles an hour. But…
It deals with serious subjects, opens up real ethical dilemmas, and does nothing at all with them. It all winds up in a slapstick brawl and then it stops. Unsettling but not in a good way. Lucas Hnath starts to unpick serious subjects, albeit in a funny way, but doesn’t try to offer any conclusions beyond a wagonload of silliness. That’s disappointing because the issues he raises are worth pondering and the relationships he develops are significant. He owes his considerable writing talent rather more substance than this pocket-size farce permits.
The cast, Finn Cole as the swimmer, Ciáran Owens as his agent/ brother, Fraser James as the coach, and Parker Lapaine as the ex, all do a fine job with the limited range that Hnath allows them. They all do speed rather than subtlety, and any nuanced character development is kicked firmly to the kerb. Matthew Dunster stages the conversations effectively, though the necessity to put the water-filled trench far to one side of the Orange Tree’s in-the-round playing space gives sightline problems for a quarter of the audience.
It’s all fine, but it could be more than fine and that’s disappointing. Finn Cole and Ciáran Owens particularly work so hard on what is by the end fluff. They deserve more. But it is good fun to watch.
Runs until 10 August 2024
