Kerry tries to get widowed teacher Stephen (Michael Gould,) who's got some sway in the local area, to help her deal with Will; in return she'll give a waitressing job to his daughter Alice (Kitty Hawthorne,) who needs a distraction from her depression over her mother's death.
Kerry Jackson quickly sets up its ideological extremes: Ripley, believe it or not, takes great joy in creating a comic monster out of Kerry, a proud Thatcherite who almost struggles to see Will as human, who's also a Leave voter annoyed that the import duty on everything needed to stock a Spanish restaurant seems to keep going up for some reason. She feels confident in passing judgement on race and immigration because she has one black friend, happy to overlook the fact that chef Athena (Madeline Appiah) is her employee and crucial to the business' success, never mind how willing she is to use Athena's own immigration status against her.
Stephen meanwhile is a well-meaning but fairly toothless liberal, frequently picked up by his daughter on the fact that his good intentions don't tend to translate to much action. This being a play governed largely by sitcom rules he and Kerry go from hurling insluts at each other to sex, and then an awkward attempt at a relationship. The cast is rounded out by Gavin Spokes as Warren, a man Kerry met and instantly forgot at speed-dating some months earlier, and who's convinced himself has a chance at romance with her. It's indicative of the way the whole play has an awkward balance between comedy and social drama, that De Angelis never really confronts the creepily posessive way Warren behaves towards a woman who's given him no real indication that she's interested.
In fact Kerry Jackson gives the impression of a play that wants to be a sitcom, but feels like it ought to make a much deeper social commentary because it's been developed at a subsidised theatre. As such the strengths of Indhu Rubasingham's production are found much more in the former - there's a a lot of funny one-liners, as well as a wildly inappropriate karaoke medley at a funeral that forms a major comic centrepiece, but they never quite gel into the kind of dark humour that would make these work with the long list of trigger warnings the subject matter necessitates.
Richard Kent's revolving set alternates between two locations and Vanessa particularly enjoyed the little details that tell you exactly who you're dealing with: The SMEG fridge in Stephen's painfully middle-class kitchen versus a Spanish restaurant that has steadfastly avoided getting any input from an actual Spanish person. Ultimately De Angelis' attempts not to outright demonise Kerry means she gets a bit of an easy ride, but as to what Kerry Jackson has to say I come back to what I said at the start - that it throws its hands up in despair at how polarised everyone's opinions have become, and the impossibility of reconciling them. As a comedy it's an entertaining evening, but as a drama it's distinctly underdeveloped..
Kerry Jackson by April De Angelis is booking until the 28th of January at the National Theatre's Dorfman.
Running time: 2 hours 35 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Marc Brenner.
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