Reviews OWE & Fringe Published 26 September 2013

The Herd

Bush Theatre ⋄ 13th September - 26th October 2013

Family business.

Stewart Pringle

Let’s plug the elephant and drag him out of the room first, shall we? The Herd shows that Rory Kinnear, one of Britain’s very best actors – as adept at playing the Dane at the National as he is at fucking a pig on the telly, can write. It would probably have been staged at the Bush whether or not the writer was once in something with James Bond, though it might not have got them queuing round the block for it. It’s a well-constructed (slightly too well-constructed) family drama that any first time writer would be thrilled with, but it’s also almost defiantly unremarkable.

We’re in one of those tense middle-class households that Dominic Cooke used to bulk buy when he ran the Court, though this one has a slight patina of the sitcom running over it. Harried mother Carol (Amanda Root) is preparing a lasagne for her son’s 21st birthday party. But he won’t be able to eat it, if he manages to come at all. Because Andy is profoundly handicapped, with a mental age of 10 months and a body that’s on the verge of giving up the ghost. Enter Carol’s immature daughter Claire (Louise Brealey), her performance-poet scouse boyfriend, two grandparents and Andy’s long absent father and you’re in for a party full of recriminations, raking overs and tearful, quivering rants.

Kinnear’s dialogue is pitched at a slight angle to reality, with a hint of the televisual to even the most prosaic exchanges. It adds a sparkle that lifts the slightly underpowered jokes, but also flattens out the emotional range, leaving the darker and more painful moments muted. It’s partly a product of Howard Davies’ direction, but Kinnear’s development of the scenario naturally inclines towards it. It doesn’t help that there’s a whiff of stock about the characters, so familiar they almost go too far and start to feel strange again. There are moments of attempted verisimilitude, such as the opening exchange between Carol and Claire about alerting the neighbours that they’ve left their car’s headlights on, that are so much like the sort of thing people say that they sound like nothing of the sort. It’s the uncanny valley of naturalism.

Things improve as they progress, the script sharpening as it moves through its two hour real-time running time. Claire in particular is a fascinating character, in her delusional image of herself as a second mother to Andy, which is genuinely agonising to see broken down. Kinnear’s most striking and original writing surrounds the concept of carer as martyr, of the selfishness of apparent selflessness, which Carol personifies with sensitivity and understanding. Concepts of chance, justice and the falling together of lives are less convincingly probed, and the scraps of Merchant of Venice dropped in by bluff grandfather Brian (the reliable Kenneth Cranham) feel forced and insufficient.

Root is good as the tragic Carol, but shuts the character off so completely from a sense of her own emotions that she becomes difficult to connect or sympathise with. This may be Kinnear’s intention, but it leaves something of an emotional vacuum at the play’s centre.

The play is utterly stolen, as they often seem to be, by the brilliant Anna Calder-Marshall, who’s just one of the funniest and most watchable actors currently working. In her hands the snitty, meddling grandmother Patricia becomes a formidable comic creation, seizing belly laughs with a flick of her eyebrow and sniping away in her quinine staccato. She’s seriously good. As usual. Are there T-Shirts? There should be T-Shirts”¦

Kinnear has a lot going for him in this debut: generally strong dialogue, a decent plot, a brilliant cast and plenty of reasons to laugh and get a bit weepy, but it’s all just too by the numbers. The one thing he seems to be missing is an original voice. But there’s time for him to find it, and The Herd suggests it’ll be well worth being there when he does.

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Stewart Pringle

Writer of this and that and critic for here and there. Artistic director of the Old Red Lion Theatre.

The Herd Show Info


Directed by Howard Davies

Written by Rory Kinnear

Cast includes Adrian Bower, Louise Brealey, Anna Calder Marshall, Kenneth Cranham, Adrian Rawlins, Amanda Root

Link http://www.bushtheatre.co.uk/

Running Time 1 hr 50 mins (no interval)

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