Beginning with an invitation to sit in a leather chair and engage in some
kind of psychoanalytic visualisation exercise, Moses Raine’s debut play
announces itself as a 50-minute voyage around the unconscious of Henry, a
troubled well-to-do teenager. His father is a bullying drinker who wants him to
join the army; his mother is a kindly hippie who starts her day at 6am with a
spot of yoga (her name is India); meanwhile, Henry’s older brother, Thomas,
has an easy masculine assurance that contrasts starkly with his own, more
effeminate diffidence.
Playwright Moses is the son of the British poet Craig Raine, originator of so-called ‘Martian’ verse, which deploys extravagant metaphor in an attempt to make strange the overly familiar (for instance, ‘Arsehole’: ‘It is shy as a gathered eyelet / neatly worked in shrinking violet’). Here Raine Jnr may be trying to develop a brand of Martianism for the stage, approaching the deservedly well-worn themes of families and death with an unsettling indirectness via a series of nautical metaphors.
This is a work of mythic archetypes and poetic associations rather than more conventional plot and characters: a repeated sequence sees Henry’s shadowy form urinating as the light overhead flickers and fuses. It obviously aims at profound feeling (the final bathroom scene) but ultimately Raine’s formal obliqueness militates against any real emotional impact. This is a slight, rather self-absorbed piece, but the fine cast (Imogen Stubbs, Sam Cox) ensure that Maria Aberg’s production is never less than watchable.
Time Out London - Robert Shore
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