Review: HOPE HAS A HAPPY MEAL, Royal Court Theatre

Less the banality of evil, and more the banality of the happy meal, Tom Fowler’s new play is a literal and a metaphorical journey of self-discovery through a steroided neo-liberal dystopia. The constituent parts of this Odyssey and Black Mirror hybrid don’t quite fit together. But they say it is the journey that counts.

Set in the hauntingly believable “People’s Republic of Koka Kola” (abandon all hope dentists who enter. IP lawyers welcome) which features such wondrously oxymoronic locations like the Facebook forest and the BP nature reserve, the eponymous Hope returns after twenty-four years in search of her long-lost son. She collects a ragtag crew of colourful characters along the way, each broken, sapped of their humanity by their world’s impinging plastic authoritarianism.  

There’s a lot of warmth here. Lucy Morrison’s directorial eye masterfully teases out the contrasts in Fowler’s writing. The production sparks with peppery wit, partly thanks to its unapologetically sui generis sense of surreal black humour. The cast delight in disarming the audience with its eccentric weirdness, leaping from clownish irreverence to hot blooded heaviness in a sugar-rushed frenzy.

The action slowly transitions down the stage from a Vegas-like carnivalesque spectacle, a canvas of fluorescent platforms, down to a rustic wooden table, Hope’s sister’s rural commune where they shelter from authoritarian oppression and can blossom emotionally. Hope’s relationship with her estranged sister ebbs and flows as love gently sparks between Ali and Isla, two of the outcasts Hope has picked up on the road.

Morrison playfully directs a strong cast who multirole their way through the smorgasbord of the weird and wonderful. Laura Checkley is the anchor; she makes Hope’s happy-go-lucky jocularity and scruffy charm look effortless whilst hinting at a gloomy inner darkness beneath each giddy smile and cheeky giggle. Nima Taleghani’s dotish but adorably big-hearted Ali finds gorgeous warmth alongside Mary Malone’s stoical Isla.   

It’s a shame that the promise of political provocation doesn’t quite deliver. Hope has a Happy Meal wants to use its saturated fats dystopia to illuminate the counterpoint: the organic humanity, the flawed individuals, the fleshy niggly bits that don’t fit into the plastic cut and paste conformity of a cancerously corporate world.

The dystopia around them feels unexplored and unmodulated. How did a multi-national conglomerate establish sovereignty in the twenty-four years since Hope left? Without detailed interrogation its promised threat lacks weight or menace. It becomes a generic, albeit beguiling, backdrop rather than the focus to be surgically dismantled. Is it meant as a prophetic vision of a Zizekian consumerist hellscape? Or is it just an excuse for a few snarky punches at big brands?

The serious satirical swipe at consumer culture gets sadly lost along the way, but there is plenty of humanity here to make up for it.  

Hope has a Happy Meal plays at the Royal Court until 8 July

Photo Credit: Helen Murray

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