Stage-to-screen review: Three Kings

After a busy first couple of months, theatres' commitment to streaming content has been tailing off as it's become increasingly apparent how much they're being hung out to dry by the government, and their resources to create online content must be running low. But they haven't given up the ghost yet entirely, and the Old Vic's occasional series of broadcasts, "In Camera," has aimed for a particularly authentic feel of a trip to the theatre: The show is performed live and streamed via Zoom; there's the sound of audience hubbub and the ten-minute bell as you take your seat (in front of the computer) and, of course, the show starts a few minutes late. Some of the less appealing features have also come with it: The Old Vic has persisted with a system of staggered ticket prices and the related online queue, despite everyone getting the same view (in theory it promotes a "pay what you can" policy but don't tell me the Duchess of Argyll wouldn't grab a £10 subsidised ticket if she got first place in the queue) and it comes with the pitfalls of live theatre - Three Kings' entire run was postponed twice when its star Andrew Scott had to have minor surgery.

Scott's back now though to perform in Stephen Beresford's new monologue, written specially for him and making good use of the actor's uniquely intense energy. Scott is Patrick, a man named after his father but with very little other connection to him: He first remembers meeting him when he was eight years old, when Patrick Sr challenged him to solve the barroom game which gives the play its title, before disappearing again for many years.

Three Kings focuses on this first encounter, the last one before the father's death decades later, and almost nothing in between - because there was almost nothing in between - and paints a picture of a man who saw himself as something of a James Bond figure and could undoubtedly charm women judging by the amount of ex-wives he racked up, but also a wilfully neglectful father. What starts as a man searching for some sign that his father ever loved him becomes gradually darker as Patrick is consumed by self-loathing at how he himself has become just as cold, distant and resistant to intimacy.

The live stream is an interesting mix of the rough-and-ready and the more artistic - there's some wobbly visuals as the camera has to zoom in and out of the titular close-up coin trick, but director Matthew Warchus has also tried to add some flourish into the presentation, with the screen splitting into two and then three shots of Scott from different angles as the play goes on. It's not without its funny moments - Patrick Sr's idea of how to speak to an 8-year-old involves telling him an anecdote about Princess Margaret stealing an ashtray , and teaching him how to say "I will shit on your cous-cous" in Arabic - but Three Kings plays to Scott's strength of balancing this light, casual comedy with him dragging you into the depths of despair and making you feel it's a privilege to let him do so. It's playing in this digital format for only five performances, but if and when theatre returns to any kind of normality I would expect it to make a return in front of live audiences; with Sea Wall no longer being exclusively performed by Scott, Three Kings could well replace it as his signature monologue for the next decade.

Three Kings by Stephen Beresford is streaming until the 5th of September from the Old Vic.

Running time: 1 hour.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.