Theatre review: A Prayer For My Daughter
A Prayer For My Daughter by Thomas Babe is a bit of an obscure American play to be putting on at the Young Vic, and having seen it I'm not sure what the motivation was for this revival. On the night of the 4th of July sometime in the 1970s, two New York cops, Kelly and Jack, have arrested Sean and Jimmy for the brutal murder of an old woman. Throughout the night they interrogate them, trying to find out which of them did it and get a confession. Meanwhile, Kelly's daughter has phoned threatening to kill herself.
As an exploration of the male psyche it's confusing and dated. Sean, the 40-something Vietnam veteran and the young smack addict Jimmy are gay, which at first antagonises the cops, before they somewhat randomly start to have their own sexualities challenged. At least Babe's dialogue is spirited and sometimes witty, even if the themes do end up getting lost and convoluted. If the choice of play is odd, Dominic Hill's production turns it into a pretty good evening at the theatre regardless - the action moves along at a fair pace, and Giles Cadle's design is oppressively claustrophobic. A lot of reviews have criticised the elaborate platform and staircase over the traverse stage because it only gets used once, for the actors to make their first entrance. It strikes me that this aspect of the design was less intended for use during the performance, more to help build the weird labyrinthine effect that the reconfigured seating of the Young Vic has here.
There's a few familiar faces among the quartet of actors: Corey Johnson is a regular on TV, probably best known as Henry van Statten on Doctor Who - here he plays Jack, the cop with a smack habit of his own, and is very good, as is Spooks regular Matthew Marsh as Kelly, the older cop who's spinning out the interrogation to avoid confronting his personal issues. Sean Chapman as Sean is the only one whose performance I wasn't convinced by, although for the most part he was good. And Colin Morgan returns to the Young Vic to play Jimmy, Sean's "daughter," and is back on form as a twitching, vulnerable but comic character, even if his Hispanic accent made me half-expect him to say "Stimpy, you idiot!" at any moment.
Morgan's another of those guys who fall into what I call the "uglysexy" category - his face and body seem to be chucked together from spare parts, but you definitely would. And in case you were worried that 2008 seemed to be seriously lacking the full-frontal nudity that marked so much of 2007 at the theatre, Morgan's got a full-frontal scene here, hurrah! Although, this staging being in traverse, it's only frontal if you randomly pick the right side of the stage to sit on. I chose correctly, so can report that while the rest of him's a bit odd-looking (in a good way) there's a perfectly respectable package in there. Actually pretty good going considering how cold it was there - the Young Vic's got strong air-conditioning, there was a fan blowing onstage, and after a few seconds in the fresh air Morgan's right bollock visibly retreated up to the warmth AND SHOW ME ANOTHER REVIEW WHERE YOU GET THAT KIND OF PRICELESS DETAIL, EH? Anyway, the women to my left seemed to like the view - after the play one of them admitted she'd been "mentally sketching" the goods.
A Prayer For My Daughter by Thomas Babe is booking until the 8th of March at the Young Vic.
As an exploration of the male psyche it's confusing and dated. Sean, the 40-something Vietnam veteran and the young smack addict Jimmy are gay, which at first antagonises the cops, before they somewhat randomly start to have their own sexualities challenged. At least Babe's dialogue is spirited and sometimes witty, even if the themes do end up getting lost and convoluted. If the choice of play is odd, Dominic Hill's production turns it into a pretty good evening at the theatre regardless - the action moves along at a fair pace, and Giles Cadle's design is oppressively claustrophobic. A lot of reviews have criticised the elaborate platform and staircase over the traverse stage because it only gets used once, for the actors to make their first entrance. It strikes me that this aspect of the design was less intended for use during the performance, more to help build the weird labyrinthine effect that the reconfigured seating of the Young Vic has here.
There's a few familiar faces among the quartet of actors: Corey Johnson is a regular on TV, probably best known as Henry van Statten on Doctor Who - here he plays Jack, the cop with a smack habit of his own, and is very good, as is Spooks regular Matthew Marsh as Kelly, the older cop who's spinning out the interrogation to avoid confronting his personal issues. Sean Chapman as Sean is the only one whose performance I wasn't convinced by, although for the most part he was good. And Colin Morgan returns to the Young Vic to play Jimmy, Sean's "daughter," and is back on form as a twitching, vulnerable but comic character, even if his Hispanic accent made me half-expect him to say "Stimpy, you idiot!" at any moment.
Morgan's another of those guys who fall into what I call the "uglysexy" category - his face and body seem to be chucked together from spare parts, but you definitely would. And in case you were worried that 2008 seemed to be seriously lacking the full-frontal nudity that marked so much of 2007 at the theatre, Morgan's got a full-frontal scene here, hurrah! Although, this staging being in traverse, it's only frontal if you randomly pick the right side of the stage to sit on. I chose correctly, so can report that while the rest of him's a bit odd-looking (in a good way) there's a perfectly respectable package in there. Actually pretty good going considering how cold it was there - the Young Vic's got strong air-conditioning, there was a fan blowing onstage, and after a few seconds in the fresh air Morgan's right bollock visibly retreated up to the warmth AND SHOW ME ANOTHER REVIEW WHERE YOU GET THAT KIND OF PRICELESS DETAIL, EH? Anyway, the women to my left seemed to like the view - after the play one of them admitted she'd been "mentally sketching" the goods.
A Prayer For My Daughter by Thomas Babe is booking until the 8th of March at the Young Vic.