David Tennant plays a young actor (Rob Harker)
spending a day around Soho, who manages to cock up a voice-over, an interview
and an audition within the space of a few hours.
Although the comedy of this piece - mainly concerned with escalating misunderstandings played in a minor key - does raise genuine laughs, I get left with a sense of melancholia and unease after watching it, rather than mirth. In its muted way, it’s very skillfully constructed with each scene showing a new aspect of this young man's flaws, traumas and neuroses. The viewer is given particular empathetic insight through an interview with his uncomprehending parents, and the unexpected appearance of an ex at what appears to be the one moment's grace that he gets.
The mood of unease is perhaps magnified a little by 17 years' historical distance, with the actor spending his day in the part of Central London that I knew best when I was young. I'm struck in the Soho street scenes by the presence of more ordinary life and less conspicuous wealth. Always interesting to see theatre (or cinema) fronts in West End scenes, as you can date what you're seeing precisely by what's on. Rob Harker walks outside the Wyndham's and Albery several times, where respectively Art (already in its fourth year) and the bold transfer from the Royal Court Upstairs of Caryl Churchill's Far Away are playing.
Although the comedy of this piece - mainly concerned with escalating misunderstandings played in a minor key - does raise genuine laughs, I get left with a sense of melancholia and unease after watching it, rather than mirth. In its muted way, it’s very skillfully constructed with each scene showing a new aspect of this young man's flaws, traumas and neuroses. The viewer is given particular empathetic insight through an interview with his uncomprehending parents, and the unexpected appearance of an ex at what appears to be the one moment's grace that he gets.
The mood of unease is perhaps magnified a little by 17 years' historical distance, with the actor spending his day in the part of Central London that I knew best when I was young. I'm struck in the Soho street scenes by the presence of more ordinary life and less conspicuous wealth. Always interesting to see theatre (or cinema) fronts in West End scenes, as you can date what you're seeing precisely by what's on. Rob Harker walks outside the Wyndham's and Albery several times, where respectively Art (already in its fourth year) and the bold transfer from the Royal Court Upstairs of Caryl Churchill's Far Away are playing.
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