Dick – Drayton Arms Theatre, London

Writer and Director: Adam Kinneen

Dick, writer and director Adam Kinneen’s ensemble take on alienated, nihilistic, sexually ambiguous 20-somethings, covers familiar territory. The lineage goes back to Spring Awakening. Think Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and F**king, or cult TV show Euphoria, with an older bunch of misfits. There are tremendous performances, strong characters, and deft directorial flourishes here, so it is a shame that the writing lacks obvious direction. One supposes Kinneen aims for a raw, brooding dive into the shattered world of Gen Zedders. Where we end up comes perilously close to an anachronistic, didactic morality tale.

Permanently hungover Noah (Joseph Lynch channelling a sourer, more cynical Sebastian from Brideshead Revisited) is on the cusp of turning 26 and sunk in a morass of existential weariness. “We’re 26 years away from realising we’re unhappy”, he tells us, which is odd because he already knows he is bored and miserable. Fear of reaching the unimaginably ghastly age of 50 is an ongoing motif in Dick. His sexually ambiguous childhood friends are in similar states of irredeemable ennui, each desperate to find change and meaning in their lives before, god forbid, they reach 30.

Ruby (Frederick Russell smoulders like a young Hugh Grant) is mainly straight but dallying with the idea of jumping into bed with hunky River (Max Brennan, pensive and ruminating). River, also mostly straight, cannot decide whether to hook up with his best mate or go to Germany instead. One wonders why he cannot do both, perhaps simultaneously. There is real chemistry between Russell and Brennan, principally in the show’s best, bravest and most consummately acted scene: four minutes of silent, heart-rending physical interplay in which the duo determine what they are prepared to sacrifice for each other.

Add to the mix Bailey (a chirpy and likably direct Andi Bickers), who, if they had sex, which they do not, would be a lesbian dominatrix. Then there is frumpy, middle-class Cleo (Nina Fidderman is woefully underused here), who dates a dud called Frank and already has the names of her possible children picked out (Leonardo? Ffs Cleo!). She tells us, “The most erotic thing anyone did for me is make me a sandwich”, so she is on solid ground with frightful Frank.

Not a huge amount happens in the first half of Dick, which is set during the characters’ consecutive 26^th birthday parties. None of the people here seems to have jobs or a life outside the friendship group. Events mostly involve sitting on furniture, chatting about sex, getting drunk, and delivering aphorisms about just how dissatisfied they are. “I only fuck men seriously” says Noah. It is anyone’s guess what he means by this. Sex is a process of “fucking someone’s time” says Ruby. “I made someone pay me for sex… beg me for it,” says Bailey, who demonstrates their abilities as a domme on a curious Noah and Ruby. “The world is full of submissive people waiting to be dominated”, someone says, by way of explanation. Someone else says, “I don’t know if this is as interesting as you think”, which is unfair because the chat, even if somewhat directionless, offers a level of satisfyingly voyeuristic fascination.

Big ideas are simmering underneath, but Kinneen’s dialogue can be overwrought and discursive as characters pair into angsty duos and trios. It is much better in the zippy, acerbic and often funny ensemble scenes. What one misses is what it is all supposed to mean. There’s a constant sense of ‘what’s the point?’. The writer has his characters continuously change clothes on stage from racks, stage left and right. These people are gasping for something new, taking on different forms and ways of being. This is about as much of a theme or through-line as we get in the first 70 minutes. Who or what ‘Dick’ is, remains unclear.

The second half has more narrative but threatens to spiral into preachiness. The always curious Noah decides that the best way of dealing with an empty life is to develop an addiction. Many people do the same thing, but few consciously choose it this way, which begs the question, why? His decision comes out of nowhere and seems solely motivated by the existentially bleak notion that “a hangover has the decency to keep you pinned down”.

Ruby joins Noah on the ride. We know where this is going. The point seems to be that curiosity kills the cat. ‘Just Say No’ feels a curiously reductive, even moralising message for a show about complex, messy, emotionally volatile Gen Zedders. “Tell me something new,” Noah insists to his friends as they shoot the breeze about sex. One cannot help but wish the writer had taken his character’s advice.

Runs until 26 April 2025