Theatre review: A Very Very Very Dark Matter

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way. Parklife!

Martin McDonagh's Lieutenant of Inishmore was revived this summer, a reminder of his early work's wilfully controversial nature, love of blood and gore, and tendency to go to some pretty surreal places. Seventeen years on from that play's debut and with McDonagh now a big name in film as well as theatre, all of those remain present and correct, except the weirdness has been dialled up to new levels. Kicking off the Bridge Theatre's second year and playing from now until early January, there's a feel of the dark Christmas story to A Very Very Very Dark Matter, especially since it includes an appearance by the man most credited with creating the modern image of Christmas; it should go without saying that it's not one for the kids though, and even if you go in with the playwright's reputation preceding him the places he goes are likely to be very unexpected.

Hans Christian Andersen (Jim Broadbent) is the most beloved man in Denmark thanks to his ever-popular fairytales and global profile; this is despite a very odd personality, downright rudeness to the kids who idolise him, and bizarre public appearances.

In private though Andersen is even odder and much more sinister: McDonagh's conceit is that he never wrote a single one of his stories but (in a twist that reminded me of the "Calliope" story from Sandman) keeps Marjory (Johnetta Eula’Mae Ackles) locked in a box in his attic, feeding her a sausage a day so she'll write his stories for him. A pigmy from the Belgian Congo, Marjory is a survivor of the massacres there despite the fact that they haven't happened yet. She tries to give a hint of her experiences in her stories but Andersen's main contribution is to edit this out, like the one word he's removed from her latest story "The Little Black Mermaid."

Discovering that Marjorie had a twin sister, Andersen becomes convinced the other superstar writer of the age must be pulling the same trick, and visits Charles Dickens (Phil Daniels) in London to try and get the truth out of him. If the premise sounds insane it's only the tip of the iceberg, and if (and it really is a big "if") the play succeeds it's despite itself. You don't even need to get to the deliberately provocative language around Marjory's race and disability for McDonagh's love of trolling the audience to raise its head, the iconoclastic premise of turning the Victorian world's two most beloved authors into talentless monsters does that (and in Andersen's case there's the uncomfortable fact that the eccentric behaviour was most likely, in modern terms, autism, giving an extra cruel touch to making fun of it.)

There's also the time-travel element, in which two dead Belgian soldiers killed by Marjorie in the future (Graeme Hawley and Ryan Pope) travel back in time after her to kill her before she can kill them - something they've seemingly tried before, unless that's another story she's spinning. It makes no sense whatsoever, but ironically this feels like the heart of why McDonagh wrote the play in the first place: The theme of cultural appropriation taken to surreally literal heights, the white men behind desks being what's remembered of the Victorian era while incomprehensible genocide was going on elsewhere, the statues of its architect Leopold II still up in Belgium while his victims are forgotten by history. The end result gives the distinct impression that McDonagh came up with the idea of Andersen and the Congolese survivor before realising that both Andersen and Dickens were long dead before the worst of the genocide took place, and trying to tie it all together with time travel.

In other words, nothing about this should work but A Very Very Very Dark Matter is often a hugely entertaining mess. This is a credit both to McDonagh's brutally witty dialogue, and to Matthew Dunster's production, which embraces the weirdness and runs with it. So we get some narration, inexplicably provided by a pre-recorded Tom Waits, which gives some much-needed explanation of what is going on with the blood-soaked Belgians, though it gets us no nearer to why. Anna Fleischle's set is a gorgeously creepy attic with overtly theatrical flourishes to take us to the other locations, and there's a central comic setpiece when Andersen visits Dickens and just won't leave (which really happened, and this isn't even the first play I've seen about it,) with Daniels' sweary Dickens, his sweary wife (Elizabeth Berrington) and sweary kids all imploding as a result.

The performances are also really shoring the evening up - I've only seen Broadbent on stage once before, in an adaptation of the camp horror film Theatre of Blood, so it's obvious he's got an affinity for these OTT roles and a touch of Grand Guignol, and is a mix of affability and real nastiness. But the real star is newcomer Ackles - Googling her name only brings up this play because it's her professional debut, which her commanding presence on stage seems to contradict. It seems highly unlikely to me that A Very Very Very Dark Matter would have got produced at all with a less famous name on the script, and it's hard to forgive either the chaotic writing or the insensitivity in the portrayal of many of the characters. But though I wouldn't go as far as Jim, who said he'd happily see it again, there's much in this unholy mess that's entertaining, and it's certainly not a show to forget in a hurry.

A Very Very Very Dark Matter by Martin McDonagh is booking until the 6th of January at the Bridge Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.