Theatre review: Clarkston

After an unplanned week away from the theatre thanks to my latest brush with Covid, I'm back at Trafalgar Theatre, whose corridors have been decorated with Americana - maps, dusty photos and pictures of bulk retail store Costco. Although could there be anything more American than a weird collective national boner for Lewis and Clark, the 19th century explorers who mapped the West, and the latter of whom provides Samuel D. Hunter's play with its title? Clarkston is an industrial town in Washington State named after William Clark, who camped out there for a while to write some of his much-loved racist diatribes about the indigenous people. Jake (Joe Locke) is a distant relative of the explorer's raised on his journals, and it's this connection that was, he claims, the reason he decided to take a break on his road trip across America and stay there for a while.

He takes a job as a night worker stacking unnecessarily large jars of pretzels in Costco, where he meets local boy Chris (Ruaridh Mollica.) The two have soon arranged to meet in the car park for sex, but when that doesn't quite go to plan their relationship ends up becoming something a bit more complex.

Jake is originally from Connecticutt and came out quite young, with very little fuss; he's quite sexually restrained though, in contrast to Chris who's felt the need to stay closeted in his small town, but is likely a bit more experienced. The pair have bigger issues than their sexuality though, as Jake has a form of Huntington's disease that is already causing him uncontrollable jerking movements, and will kill him by the time he's 30. Chris has had a rough upbringing thanks to his meth addict mother Trisha (Sophie Melville,) who's currently clean but whom he can't quite trust to stay that way.

The result isn't earth-shatteringly original and could be pacier in its first half, but Clarkston ends up being an extremely enjoyable, sweet and unconventionally romantic comedy drama about these two young men trying to be a positive influence in each other's lives - and often accidentally having the opposite effect. This could be a bit too big a space for the story but Jack Serio's production has opted to put a couple of audience banks on Milla Clarke's set, which helps provide some of the intimacy that might have been lost.

The performances - brittle, often spiky but always likeable - are at the heart of the evening's overall success, but the secret weapon is Stacey Derosier's lighting, which increasingly washes everything out in eerie orange. Jan said that as the story reached its darkest moment he'd barely noticed how the scene had essentially become monochrome, only for colour to flood back in for the optimistic finale at the ocean. Hunter's play could have easily felt out of its depth on a West End stage but a strong cast and some canny choices make it feel very much at home there.

Clarkston by Samuel D. Hunter is booking until the 22nd of November at the Trafalgar Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.