Theatre review: That Is Not Who I Am

Theatres are going to have to keep trying to make up their Covid losses for some years to come, so you can forgive them if they try the odd gimmick to get bums on seats. Or at least you'd think you could, but the Royal Court's latest show has come with an elaborate framing device that extends way beyond the stage and begins with the publicity; something that could be described as underhand but in reality feels more like the theatre overtly trying to create an air of mystery, so why it seems to have made some critics quite so angry is a bit beyond me. In any case the setup is that the venue had discovered a first-time writer, a man in late middle age called Dave Davidson, who'd dabbled in playwrighting before but not had anything produced until That Is Not Who I Am. This pretence barely seemed to last a couple of days before it was commonly known Davidson was the pseudonym of an established author. Now that it's opened the information is easy to find but just in case anyone's still trying to go in blind, I'll keep the spoilers for after this text break.

So not only does Dave Davidson not exist, neither does That Is Not Who I Am. Instead we get an opening message informing us that Lucy Kirkwood's Rapture is breaking a Home Office embargo about a pair of suspicious deaths, and so incendiary it had to be staged in secret, under all these layers of misdirection.

Ex-serviceman Noah (Jake Davies) and nurse Celeste (Siena Kelly) meet when paired up by The Guardian's Blind Date column and immediately hit it off*. Over the next few years we see them move in together, get married and have a baby, staying likeably in love and a kind of Everycouple. In fact it's their average nature that eventually makes them become notable: Dabbling in conspiracy theories but for the most part concerned with real issues - predominantly climate change although economic inequality is also a major talking point - they don't align easily with either the Left or the Right, and can't find a political "tribe" they fit into. So they create their own when Noah starts a YouTube channel and his followers steadily grow.

Not everything about the marketing is purposely misleading: The blurb calls it "a slippery new thriller in which nothing is as it seems and nobody is who they are," and that seems a fair description of Rapture if not quite in the way the advertised play about identity theft would suggest. I certainly enjoyed it and there's a lot of good comic lines in among the growing paranoia, but as I try to piece it back together to write about it, the play definitely feels "slippery." Apart from their growing online profile Daphne Noah and Celeste continue to feel fairly average, affable even as they get increasingly jittery about being spied on. Noah's videos, plus a self-produced movie, toy with the idea of insurrection and even guillotining the 1%, but how much is metaphor and how much is real threats of violence also feels very much subject to interpretation.

Kirkwood achieves much of this by putting herself on stage with the couple. As played by Priyanga Burford, the playwright doesn't just act as a narrator but is open about the way she's shaped the story (out of public record, illicit recordings of the couple that had since surfaced, and speculation on reddit.) We know from the start that the couple will end up dead, and Kirkwood is upfront about the fact that she believes it was murder, and that Rapture is shaped by this perspective. The real Kirkwood even turns up at one point to challenge the way her onstage avatar is representing her. Lucy Morrison's production embraces the themes of how theatricality is shaping the story - the stage management team are always very visibly onstage, rotating Naomi Dawson's set and rebuilding the couple's flat around them.

Probably the most tangible thing about what Rapture's trying to say is in its warnings about the current Government's steady slip into authoritarianism: From the framing device's embargo being set by the Home Secretary, to Celeste's co-workers remembering her claiming she had damaging information (that might have been Partygate or might have been even more incendiary,) one thing that isn't nebulous about the story is who might ultimately feel threatened by it. But outside of that much of the enjoyment comes from how it plays with reality and perspective; its pseudonymous PR stunt may, ultimately, just be a PR stunt, but at least it's one that's in keeping with the play it's selling, and on seeing the show definitely feels like an integrated part of the experience. I thought the way the play ended was one gimmick too many, and I really expected a much bigger twist being built around the couple's child, but overall I found this a very enjoyable little headfuck. And I hope Lucy Kirkwood's friends continue to call her Dave well beyond the point where it's funny any more.

Rapture by Lucy Kirkwood is booking until the 16th of July at the Royal Court's Jerwood Theatre Downstairs.

Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan / Tristram Kenton.

*they shag on the first date, so presumably they're trying to impress The Guyliner