Theatre review: The Woods

It might be long past time to add David Mamet to the pile of theatre creatives life's honestly way too short to be doing with: The Woods may be one of those rare shows that comes in slightly under the advertised running time, but it feels about twice as long. Dating from 1977, it's one of the battle-of-the-sexes plays Mamet really should have realised aren't his forte by now, and sees young couple Nick (Sam Frenchum) and Ruth (Francesca Carpanini) take a break at the remote cabin Nick inherited from his family. City girl Ruth is charmed and endlessly fascinated by the rural setting but Nick, who spent a lot of time at the cabin as a child, seems to associate the place with bad memories and be frightened of almost everything about the surrounding woods and lakes, to the point that you have to wonder why he ever agreed to return there in the first place. What he's probably really afraid of is being with his girlfriend in a place with no distractions, and having to confront what his actual feelings are.

Which feels like a generous amount of effort to put into finding meaning in a breathtakingly dreary 85 minute conversation that goes round in circles - different circles, I don't think the characters are particularly paying attention to each other - and is presumably aiming for a study of an unhealthy, co-dependent couple. But, like so many stories seem to, it's actually landed on two people who fundamentally dislike each other on a molecular level, but are still somehow unaccountably in a relationship. Somewhere along the way they break up, although I'm not entirely sure they both notice, they certainly don't behave any differently with each other.

For someone considered a master of dialogue, what Mamet actually delivers is clearly meant to be a little bit off-kilter from naturalism, but in practice comes straight out of a parody of pretentious, stagey conversation. "What's a New Moon?" "I don't know." "I just..." "Yes." "But the Vikings..." "Let me finish!" If you're going to deal in half-finished sentences at least give us some surreal comedy or Pinteresque menace to go with them. Ruth informs us that her vagina smells a bit like fish, which I think we can all agree is a development only America's most lauded living dramatist could have delivered, definitely not any random teenage boy you grabbed off the street.

And because they speak entirely in stories and metaphors, none of them actually taken to their conclusion, I can't say I know anything about who these people were meant to be, other than "generically unpleasant." Nick is scared of being hit by lightning but it must be very far away since we never hear the accompanying thunder: Only the sound of drinks glasses crashing to the ground as the audience nodded off provided the required sound effect.

Needless to say this is all going to come down to sex, and needless to say the combination of David Mamet and 1977 is going to make this problematic, particularly Nick's attitudes to consent. But to be honest both their sexual techniques seem to involve unexpectedly grabbing each other's crotches then throwing a strop because they're not instantly ready to go, so the idea that their fiery sexual chemistry is keeping them together long enough to learn to hate each other is pretty flimsy as well. Ruth does at one point say "I want to put my finger inside you," but her body language doesn't even suggest that means what you think it does. Director Russell Bolam and his cast do their best to make anything out of this dud (although I thought they could have done a bit more to utilise Anthony Lamble's set, which might as well be a painted backdrop for all the use it gets) but yet again, a playwright's idea that putting together characters nobody would want to spend a minute and a half with, and asking an audience tio spend an hour and a half with them, turns out to have a mysterious fatal flaw.

The Woods by David Mamet is booking until the 26th of March at Southwark Playhouse's Large Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Pamela Raith.