First night review

by QUENTIN LETTS

Last updated at 11:47 08 December 2006


They do their best to hide it but there is a dirty secret to the short production which opened at the New Ambassadors last night. Whisper this, please, but the story is sentimental.

This is a striking development in modish West End drama. The cast includes hot-hot Cillian Murphy (who starred in The Wind That Shakes the Barley) and Kirsten Johnston and Neve Campbell. Last night's opening was stuffed with black polo necks and designer spectacles.

And still the show has a sentimental conclusion. Amazing.

Murphy plays Beane, a 20-something depressive who seems to be somewhere on the autistic spectrum. He is ultra-literal and has difficulty making friends.

But then something happens to him. He turns up at the flat of his sister Joan (done boozily, with tremendous peppery wit, by Johnston) and says that he has "met someone".

The encounter has transformed him from the sad loner into someone who suddenly finds the whole world meaningful. Beane has discovered love!

Joan and her husband (excellent Michael McKean) are at first baffled by Beane's transformation. Then they are cheered. Then they wonder: er, is it true? They never get to meet Beane's girlfriend Molly (Campbell, looks great, sounds a bit nasal). Does Molly exist or is she a fantasy?

I have two quibbles. First, Murphy is too good-looking. This story could be a great deal more approachable if the person playing Beane was plainer.

Myself, I have a handsome son who is Aspergery, so I am not making any generalisation about the beauty of autistic people. But the dramatic force of the evening would be more intense if Beane's love affair was more of a surprise.

Second, why don't they play up the sentimentality more? They are passages which seem pretentiously grimy. The language can be unnecessarily bad.

It's as though playwright John Kolvenbach thinks, "Yikes, it's ten minutes since we had an F-word, people will be getting twitchy".

All it does is detract from a 90-minute show which has its heart bang in the right place.

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