REVIEW: The Unfriend, People's Theatre, Newcastle
When a 'killer' comes to stay
Steven Moffat’s comedy seems to be popping up all over the place, the rights for amateur productions presumably having been made available quite recently.
It was on last week at Gateshead’s Little Theatre which is when friends of mine also caught it in a theatre on the Wirral.
Now the People’s have taken it up, with director Ian Willis at the helm.
The setting is suburban sitcom territory – living room, kitchen, staircase - although the opening scene has us aboard a cruise liner with the Lindels, Peter and Debbie, engaging in casual holiday small talk with a garrulous American.
Elsa Jean Krakowski, flamboyantly brought to life by Ann Zunder, says they must visit if ever they’re in Denver. But suddenly – it seems like suddenly - she’s at the Lindels’ door with luggage following in hot pursuit.
Thus is family life in the couple’s “little home” turned upside down – sort of.
For although Debbie has discovered something alarming about Elsa on the Internet, enough to have made her want to ‘unfriend’ her and cancel a visit they hadn’t particularly welcomed in the first place, the couple’s teenage kids, typically awkward and bolshy, seem to take to her.
How, then, to cope when a possible killer has infiltrated your safe space?
I dare say most of us will have one or two very effective answers to that question. But to buy into the world Steven Moffat has created, you must suspend disbelief from the highest branch and stretch plausibility just about as far as it will go.
Peter and Debbie, played with commendable conviction by Daniel Magee and Helen Parker, are hapless to an extreme degree, hamstrung by an innate politeness.
“We lack the necessary social skills to avoid death,” laments Debbie at one point, although at least her frustration prompts action, even if her ranting and raving (Parker letting rip) doesn’t result in much more than the uncorking of a bottle.
Magee’s Peter responds to the crisis differently, becoming more tongue-tied, absent-minded and action-averse as time goes by – as Mark Buckley’s neighbour (just The Neighbour, too boring to have a name) would testify.
As kids Alex (Jamie Cordes) and Rosie (Sarah Jane Fisher) become more human in Elsa’s presence, the adults – the English ones – get ever more stupid and ineffectual.
I felt frustration mounting, the same frustration as I feel in horror films when there’s something threatening outside but someone always has to go to the shed. Or in pantos when people never turn round to see the ghost.
“Call the police,” I wanted to yell.
But then the police are on the scene in the form of Steve Parry as the unlikely PC Junkin, the name alone hardly inspiring confidence.
What with this and a prolonged and rather icky toilet scene, I felt that plausibility elastic extending to within a millimetre of a mighty snap.
Ayckbourn it ain’t, despite a fair spattering of laughs, but Wednesday’s audience seemed to like it very much – and the set is extremely well furnished if you like that kind of thing.
The Unfriend runs until Saturday, May 2. Tickets from the People’s Theatre website or call the box office on 0191 265 5020