Theatre review: The Hunger Games

My second in-the-round show of the week, but instead of an intimate vag Miriam Buether has given us a huge arena in a purpose-built new theatre that hosts an epic quest. But enough about trying to find your way from Canary Wharf tube to the Troubadour - there are some signs but as far as we could tell they only started once you were practically there - Conor McPherson's biggest show in his year of paying off his mortgage is the first stage adaptation of Suzanne Collins' The Hunger Games. Matthew Dunster directs the story of a future America called Panem, a Roman Empire-inspired dictatorship where the Capitol lives in decadent luxury while the 12 Districts work to keep them in it. To suppress rebellion and remind everyone who's boss, President Snow (a pre-recorded John Malkovich, phoning in his performance in more ways than one) holds the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death between teenagers from each District, shown live on TV as entertainment for the Capitol.

The focus is on District 12, the poorest of the Districts, where the female Tribute Katniss (Mia Carragher) volunteers to replace her little sister who's drawn by lot. She's joined by male Tribute Peeta (Euan Garrett,) who's going to be awkward for her to kill as he once saved her family's lives.

I'd try to explain the plot more but there seems little point when the show itself pretty much assumes the audience already knows it - I've read the books and seen the films so was up to speed, but it was long enough ago that with a couple of plot points I had forgotten, it was more a case of me being reminded of them when I couldn't figure out what had just happened, rather than the story actually being clear from the telling. It's one of the problems with trying to condense a novel into a couple of hours, exacerbated by the fact that the show is credited as "Based on the Lionsgate Motion Picture" as much as it is on Collins' book.

So there's obviously some pressure on to recreate story beats and visuals not just from the book but from the film as well, and that does hamper the pacing. Most notably, it feels like the character of Gale (Tristan Waterson) could have easily been edited out altogether, as the play only covers the first book so the love triangle (that Collins was famously pressured into including, and her disinterest in which I always thought was blatantly obvious) isn't necessary: Katniss' dilemma over whether to fake returning Peeta's romantic feelings for the cameras is surely emotional drama enough. The fact that Katniss has been made narrator as well as central character, constantly breaking the action to tell us what's going on, hardly helps the pacing either.

Dib dib dob dob

The faithfulness to the films extends to Moi Tran's costumes - the publicity photos have stuck to the tributes so I assumed the Capitol citizens' ridiculous costumes were being held back as showstopping surprises, but in the end the named characters just look familiar - although I did like the attempt to do the "girl on fire" costume, a hell of a challenge when you don't have CGI in your toolbox. Even the casting raises questions about lookalikes: Joshua Lacey as alcoholic mentor Haymitch, Tamsin Carroll as vapid chaperone Effie Trinket and Stavros Demetraki as sleazy host Caesar Flickerman are all doing good work here, but it must have been disheartening to look around the rehearsal room and clock how many of them could be mistaken, at a distance, for their screen counterparts.

While many people have pointed out Collins' premise wasn't original, I did think her books were particularly good at highlighting the way the corrupt society sexualises and glamourises kids who are being sent to their deaths, and these are some of the moments Dunster's production does get right - the costume designer Cinna (Nathan Ives-Moiba) is one of the few genuinely helpful and warm characters on Katniss' team, but there's a grotesqueness to just how important his visual contribution has to be to her staying alive. The context also makes it creepy to have a gender-ambiguous Mark Samaras do a big musical number to welcome the teenagers to the city where they'll be killed.

I wasn't expecting subtlety or for the show to really hit a lot of emotional points - if we struggle to really identify with Katniss and Peeta there was no chance of seeing the brutal Cato (Felipe Pacheco) as a victim too in the way the book eventually does. The audience seating banks are split into 11 of the 12 Districts, and every time a Tribute is killed, that District is lit up in red. It might have been moving if it didn't just make me think we'd been knocked out of The 1% Club.

I did think it might concentrate on the spectacle but while there's a lot to look at it doesn't really get the pulse racing: The action could have been the saving grace but it has the wind taken out of  it by constantly going back to the intimate moments an arena show was never going to have much chance with. And the much-vaunted up-close action doesn't quite come off either - we were a few feet away from the sole moment of wirework to take place near the audience, and it was still underwhelming. The cast are putting their all in - they're certainly getting their cardio - but in the end neither story nor spectacle quite come off.

And let it be known that Phill will neither forgive nor forget that Effie didn't say "mahogany."

The Hunger Games by Conor McPherson, based on the novel by Suzanne Collins and the Lionsgate Motion Picture, is booking until the 25th of October at the Troubadour Canary Wharf Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Johan Persson.