Theatre review: Foxfinder

Last seen in London in 2011 when it was the Papatango award winner, Dawn King's Foxfinder is, on the face of it, a canny revival for 2018 when its paranoia and scapegoating can be repackaged as a Brexit play. But something's gone wrong in the execution of Rachel O'Riordan's production, and it’s left a play that can be genuinely creepy and atmospheric floundering. Samuel (Paul Nicholls) and Judith Covey (Heida Reed) own a farm somewhere in a dystopian England where food is scarce, so farmers like them are under immense pressure to live up to – seemingly quite unrealistic – crop quotas. Some months earlier, the couple’s four-year-old son drowned, and Samuel retreated into a long depression. Between this and bad weather they’re struggling to live up to their targets so the government has sent an investigator to determine if they’ve mismanaged the farm, or worse: If there’s a fox on their land.

Seen as borderline-supernatural creatures, foxes are blamed for all the country’s problems, and William Bloor (Iwan Rheon) was taken away from his family at the age of five to be trained as a Foxfinder, a cross between religious zealot and government inspector, who’ll determine whether they have an infestation.

The Coveys are essentially in a lose-lose situation, because if they’re judged to be responsible for the farm’s failure William has the power to give it to new owners, and send them to the dreaded factories, whose workers’ average life expectancy is three years; but if he does determine there’s a fox on the land, there’s always the risk he’ll judge them complicit with the beast, and their fate will be the same or worse. Only neighbour Sarah (Bryony Hannah) seems to accept the rumours that foxes were actually hunted to extinction decades ago, and are being used as scapegoats for the government’s failings, but she’s afraid to voice this dissent too loudly as that could make her farm the Foxfinder’s next target.

The richness and cleverness of the allegorical world King’s created makes its ideas swirl around in your head long after the play’s ended, which means her writing actually comes out of this a lot better than the production serves it. It’s largely miscast – “creepy but hot” is very much Rheon’s niche, but he strangely seems to be dialling down how screwed up William is by his puritanical life of seclusion and indoctrination – even the scene where he self-flagellates is pretty tame (and if the producers have chosen not to release production photos of the fact that he takes his shirt off, they’ve only got themselves to blame if audiences don’t show up.) And he may be as authentically deathly-pale as the role requires, but even in an industry where teenagers are regularly played by much older actors, 33-playing-19 is getting a bit too 90210.

Meanwhile the vagueness of where exactly the play is located is only exacerbated by Nicholls’ well-travelled accent (“Ooh arr, t’fox is on t’farm like pet, ye ken? Sacré bleu!”) and only Hannah really conveys much urgency. Gary McCann’s set cleverly mixes interiors with exteriors, but makes for a setting that’s not claustrophobic enough and everything, right up to the interval that’s presumably only there for contractual reasons*, contributes towards sucking the tension and eeriness out of the play. It’s a shame the production falls flat, as the play itself feels more powerful if anything with the passing of time.

Foxfinder by Dawn King is booking until the 5th of January at the Ambassadors Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Pamela Raith.

*unless O’Riordan was really committed to ‘“I’m going to make a sandwich” “No… I’ll make it”’ as a cliffhanger