Review: THE CRITIC, The Calder Bookshop and Theatre

It's a delight to browse amongst the books in the shop at this unique venue and then push through to the small but beautifully appointed theatre that lies at the back. There's just a hint of the frisson that the Pevensie children must have felt on stepping through the wardrobe door. Unfortunately, that's where the magic stopped.

We open on Hugh, a middle-aged man, barking into his phone, a theatre critic who is terribly pleased with his selection as a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate, with his middle-age crisis wine cellar and, most of all, with himself. Obviously, and not without a tinge of guilt for those of us with notebooks in hand, we hate him.

He's expecting a visit from a dominatrix but gets plenty of rather less welcome pain instead in the form of Alex, a would-be assassin who bears a grudge after a bad review that closed her play, bankrupted her and led to her ex-husband getting custody of the kids. What makes it worse is the fact that it was all a big joke to Hugh, part of some public schoolboyish prank he set up with a frenemy fellow critic.

For all its implausibility, it's not the worst set-up and, 40 years or so ago, would have made for a splendid Tale Of The Unexpected perhaps starring Donald Sinden and Charlotte Rampling. Indeed, there's a fine one hour play somewhere here, but it's lost in a sprawling, two hours plus staging that is almost contrary in its wilful, continual dissipation of tension. Ultimately it's a plot that cranks up our need to suspend disbelief until our patience is simply worn out.

It's almost unfair to highlight the fact that the quality of the performances works against the quality of the play. Gary Heron sketches his entitled Hugh so skilfully in the first scene that our antipathy sticks to him and he never elicits our sympathy when the (inevitable) daddy issues surface. So too Gemma Pantaleo, whom we never quite nail as a psycho but who is required to march into Patrick Bateman territory just as we're warming to her. She shows that Alex hasn't the heart for it and, not without an inward sigh, we see the predictable second half of the play stretching out in front of us.

John Hill's black comedy under Sally Ripley's direction searches for a consistent tone (which would help land some laugh lines rather better than they did on the night I saw the show) and drifts when it should focus. It's all a bit of a disappointment (an uncomfortably long one to boot) because all the ingredients for a deliciously dark dramedy are present here, but, like Alex's gun, they just don't fire.

The Critic is at the Calder Bookshop and Theatre until 10 December

Photo Credit: Calder Theatre

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