Theatre review: Skeleton Crew

Michael Longhurst's run at the Donald and Margot Warehouse ends with something of a whimper, as the original play scheduled to close his tenure had to be cancelled - I think for contractual reasons - and instead director Matthew Xia was given Dominique Morisseau's Skeleton Crew. It's a play that does feel connected to the last few years at the venue, which have included two Lynn Nottage plays about the decline of American industry in the 2000s, but while the themes are similar Morisseau doesn't quite have the spark to her writing that elevates Nottage. Set in the break room of the last small car factory left in Detroit in 2008, the workforce have been pared back to a bare minimum but the four employees we meet are trying to convince themselves that the factory's closure in the next couple of years isn't as inevitable as it looks.

They are supervisor Reggie (Tobi Bamtefa,) union rep Faye (Pamela Nomvete,) who's got nearly 30 years' experience on the factory floor, pregnant Shanita (Racheal Ofori,) who feels her work making cars is a calling, and Dez (Branden Cook,) who's got Chekhov's gun stashed in his locker.

All have their own external struggles that'll make losing this job particularly painful, none more than Faye who's in remission from breast cancer and, this being America, is now consequently homeless and penniless. Reggie is the son of her late girlfriend and as such Faye treats him as family (her actual son was radicalised by a preacher who convinced him to disown his mother for her sexuality,) so Reggie lets her in on the secret that the factory's fate has already been sealed. But she's sworn to silence, and has to watch as the two younger employees turn down other jobs in the hope they can hold on to the ones they love.

Any show featuring Pamela Nomvete is going to be worth a look and she provides a warm heart to Skeleton Crew: Although Faye acts as a maternal figure not just to Reggie but to everyone, Nomvete also invests her with a real sense of exhaustion and complexity; her self-destructiveness is typified by her continuing to smoke after surviving cancer, something which Shanita in particular is very worried about. But the whole quartet bring real life and personality to their characters, the performances being the highlight of Xia's production.

But the naturalism in Morisseau's writing results in a very slow evening. There's nothing wrong with a character piece that's not packed with incident, but combine that with such a downbeat subject and the oppressively bass-heavy music and it makes for something of a slog, especially when the audience is going to step into a world outside that's hardly that much more financially secure than the one we're watching*. ULTZ' set features factory pistons pounding over the action during scene changes, but the fact that I kept wondering why they were even there (only those of us in the very highest seats would have been able to see them) probably doesn't say much about how well the play captured my attention. It's a shame because so much of what the production does is good, but it's overwhelmed by the sense that it could have been done much more concisely.

Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau is booking until the 24th of August at the Donmar Warehouse.

Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Helen Murray.

*what happened to the theory that in depressing times, light and escapist entertainment thrives? Then again I'm not sure the Donmar is entirely on the ball about the average British person's finances, given that for the next season the seats we were in tonight have had their price hiked by nearly 150%