She also feels under attack every time she leaves the house, with a steady supply of men all played by Hollywood Body Double Leander Deeny variously threatening, insulting, patronising or outright assaulting her, so any sense of paranoia she might feel gets regularly validated.
There are no such confidence issues for her son's new Year Six teacher Ana (Laura Whitmore,) whom Mia is drawn to despite some unusual behaviour (mainly the fact that she keeps offering to breastfeed the baby for her.) The two become friends, and Ana starts to give her seductive pep-talks about how she's special and can reclaim power over the men who intimidate her, but it starts to look like she has a more drastic solution in mind than just a confidence boost.
At this point I'd normally put in a spoiler warning but in the last week or so it looks like Hampstead has drastically changed its publicity strategy for the play: Where the website blurb drops some hints and references the supernatural, the ads now explicitly sell Apex Predator as a vampire story. The fact that an unnecessary interval has been shoehorned into a show that would have run at just 80 minutes without one suggests it's there to let audiences digest the big reveal at the end of Act I, but I guess the horror fans won't be turning up if the show's not on their radar in the first place, so no plot twist any more.
The two-act structure just accentuates how unevenly paced the play is, and just how short for the story it's trying to tell: The first act is a nice slow burn to the reveal (although one that would have worked a lot better if I hadn't repeatedly seen that reveal announced in Instagram ads,) but then it leaves us with a little over half an hour to tie up a story that's only just opened up into a whole mythology (it appears these vampires aren't hurt by sunlight, but they do need permission to enter a home.)
The basic premise, of looking at the issue of women constantly feeling at threat from men by making the most extreme reversal of the power dynamic imaginable, is a strong one, but it gets diluted by what feel like potential other plot digressions: Ana insists choosing Mia was about the special qualities she saw in her, but the story toys with the idea that there might be an alternative motive - possibly to get access to Joe and the investigation into the vampires' murders, or because their son Alfie (Callum Knowelden or Lorcan Reilly) might have some supernatural powers of his own. There's a thread about climate change and vampires fearing their food source is going to wipe itself out that's reminiscent of Ultraviolet, and the play even toys with a further twist ending (both downbeat and unearned, so fortunately it's not followed through, but it's made me remember the final season of Ragnarok so now I'm angry again.)
Blanche McIntyre's production is stylish, particularly in Tom Piper's set which puts a white room in the middle of a dark pit surrounded by scaffolding, but given the subject matter it is a bit of a letdown that the white canvas isn't there to get liberally spattered with blood. It feels a bit like the pilot of a rejected TV series, what with all the setup and the seeding of potential future plotlines - and it's probably a series I'd want to watch to see them developed, but instead we jump to what's probably the first season finale, with all that potential left untapped.
Apex Predator by John Donnelly is booking until the 26th of April at Hampstead Theatre.
Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Ellie Kurttz.
No comments:
Post a Comment