UR TV CAST

Undergoing a mid-life crisis, Edmond informs his staggered wife that she is spiritually and sexually uninteresting, then he simply walks out and spirals down into New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. In this urban jungle, he pawns his wedding ring, hopelessly seeks satisfaction from whores, gets done over by cardsharps, is treated like scum and goes psychotic with what’s ironically called a survival knife.
This is a short play of fragmentary encounters, which could be problematic, but, after a slightly feeble start, it becomes enthralling. This is partly due to Mamet’s downbeat yet taut dialogue, and to the vertiginous speed of Edmond’s fall to the lower depths The shifts in tone are also profoundly unsettling. Edmond’s outraged, screeching wife (Tracy-Ann Oberman) briefly seems a farcical caricature, but you’re a terrifyingly long way from that by the time Branagh’s Edmond is savagely kicking a pimp unconscious and coming back to spit on his body, screaming “I hope you’re dead.”Edmond’s festering rage at everyone’s money-grabbing callousness and his increasingly bloody fits of violence, in fact compare with the grim horrors of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment The implicit criticism is of capitalism. Edmond’s racist rants are ferociously un-PC, as well – perhaps even more provocative than Mamet’s anti-feminist drama, Oleanna. Uttered here by Branagh’s Edmond, standing in underpants and looking like some crazed caveman, he might also be taken for a satirical portrait of your “great white American male”, declaring war on anyone who seems threateningly different.But then Edmond’s final scene in jail, with a burly black cell-mate (Nonso Anozie), seems to move from retribution towards a kind of peace.

For their relationship opens out into quiet, cranky philosophising about who can foresee a man’s fate, and it ends up hovering between near-marital tenderness, hope and bleak despair.Edward Hall’s production, set in a concrete arena with a revolve, is both slick and visceral. Strong supporting performances include Nicola Walker as the wired waitress, Glenna. One patch drags, labouring the religious theme, the preacher scene having being extended from the script that I have. But that’s a cavil, and Branagh’s performance is a tour de force. He changes, effortlessly, from a stolid Everyman to a comic nerd, at one point stomping around in no pants at all, without enough cash to pay for sex. You might remark that Edmond is a kind of uncool Shackleton: the adventurer manqu?But then his heftiness becomes frightening and predatory – before he is cowed again. It’s a hell of a journey.Meanwhile, Bath Theatre Royal’s busy summer season continues, under the directorship of Sir Peter Hall (Edward’s father).

DH Lawrence’s The Fight for Barbara (reviewed last week and well worth seeing) is now in rep with Pinter’s Betrayal and No?Coward’s Design for Living, creating an intriguing trio of plays about love triangles – all informed by the dramatists’ personal experiences. However, Sir Peter’s staging of Design for Living has landed some exaggerated raves.You can still feel the daring of Coward’s 1930’s portrait of alternative sexual orientations, with careless partner-swopping and bisexual love knots in chic apartments. Moreover, this is a largely enjoyable, entertaining production, with a charmingly funny and swanky Aden Gillett playing the hit playwright, Leo. Janie Dee, as Gilda, also has charisma, swanning around in her silk dressing gown. However, she rushes many lines, the emotional intensity consequently shallowed and the wit sounding like rote. Meanwhile, Hugo Speer (with little stage experience) is peculiarly wooden as the besotted painter, Otto.No one exudes what makes this threesome intense: obsessive love, irresistible sexual chemistry, and vulnerability beneath the gay laughter. John Gunter’s art deco set with one window slanting at an expressionistic angle epitomises the shortcomings.