The septet have become aware of the death of a man called Joe, and are convinced they’re going to be blamed and prosecuted for his murder. So they’re staging a re-enactment of their interactions with him in his last few days, to see if they can either root out the killer from within their ranks, or prove that it can’t have been any of them.
They enlist a homeless man, Danny (Jamael Westman) to play Joe, and we see how this neurotypical man with severe depression had a lightbulb moment when he met Todd (Koleosho,) who likes to hug random strangers on the number 22 bus. The brief moment of comfort makes Joe fascinated with Todd, whom he follows to the drama group, where he variously charms and annoys the members. Not only does he try to infiltrate their group, he starts to fake neurodiverse behaviour himself, including developing an obsession with listing the US States in reverse alphabetical order, and even responds to Rose’s (Newman) romantic advances.
The second half ups the surreal ante (I know people who’d like to make Jamael Westman sweat, but I don’t think a giant hamster wheel is what they had in mind,) with everyone decamping to the island in the middle of a park’s duckpond (Cai Dyfan’s design makes it seem like a remote jungle. But with the occasional pedalo.) It’s certainly not short of ideas, and while largely fun Imposter 22 does also go to some darker places where it deconstructs clichés about friendly neurodiverse people who are either invisible, or just a plot device to make the neurotypical discover themselves – all the characters are generally friendly and fun, but most show a more dangerous side that suggests they could, in fact, turn out to be the killer.
It feels a bit like missing the point to criticise a show by and about people with mental disabilities for not being entirely coherent to neurotypical viewers, but while the evening’s a lot of fun there’s definitely elements where you feel the theatre professionals guiding the project could have tightened things up: Notably, Danny disappears abruptly in the middle of the second act, and Todd replaces him as the Joe stand-in for the rest of the evening, even after Westman returns; the diversion ends with more of a non-sequitur than a resolution, maybe that’s the point?
The show also has a couple of incredibly harsh attitudes from the otherwise likeable protagonists, and again I was left wondering if a point was being made about neurodiverse people having problems with empathy. One example is the group toying with the idea of not giving Danny the money he’d been promised for taking part, because he’ll “only spend it on drugs.” A more striking one is the attitude towards the imposter himself, who may be weirdly appropriating the lives of neurodivergent people, but it’s made clear he sees it as the only alternative to suicide, so I could have done with a bit more exploration of some of the group dismissing him as a “fucking tourist cunt.” Still, if the experiment hasn’t entirely come off, it feels worth doing.
Imposter 22 by Molly Davies, created by Molly Davies, Kirsty Adams, Cian Binchy, Housni Hassan (DJ), Dayo Koleosho, Stephanie Newman, Lee Phillips and Charlene Salter from an original idea by Hamish Pirie is booking until the 14th of October at the Royal Court’s Jerwood Theatre Downstairs.
Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Ali Wright.
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