Naomi Wallace’s dark, joyless debut at the Hampstead is sunk by awkward dialogue, an unlikely plot, and an absence of tension.
12 May 2022
“There is nothing in this world that I love that begins with the letter O,” intones one of the characters in this glacially slow, turgidly composed drama. This is not the worst example of the WTF nature of some of writer Naomi Wallace’s laboured discourse, but as an evening at The Breach leaves one with the feeling of being hit over the head by a sledgehammer, it is about all I can do to recall this little gem.
It is not that there aren’t some interesting questions asked in the play about the meaning of consent and the nature of betrayal.
But these themes get lost in the clumsiness and irrationality of the narrative, dialogue that strives for dark menace but sometimes just invites mockery, and the absence of any obvious dramatic tension. That is a shame, because underneath all this mess there is an interesting albeit improbable story gasping for breath.
It is 1977, and somewhere in middle America fourteen-year-old Acton is being bullied at school.
School jocks, in the form of rich-kid Hoke and nice-but-dumb Frayne, ride to his rescue in exchange for the chance to use the basement of Acton’s family home as a teenage clubhouse. Seventeen-year-old sister Jude, who works every hour to help the siblings’ grieving widowed mum make the rent, reluctantly agrees not to snitch on the boys.
In short order the three boys are thick as thieves in the basement, “eating, sleeping and jerking off together”. At one point the boys burst into a rendition of ‘Nights in White Satin’, which I imagine is supposed to communicate a shared pronouncement of loyalty and love. You can tell it is all going to get very ‘Lord of The Flies’ pretty sharpish.
The boys soon come up with a game called ‘Top My Love’, wherein each one is required to sacrifice something big to demonstrate fealty to the gang. Hoke chucks his exams. Frayne stands by while his beloved dog is killed. Then it is Acton’s turn and what is asked of him will change the lives of Jude and the boys forever.
Fast-forward to 1991. Acton has jumped to his death from a bridge, a death foreshadowed in his own father’s fatal accident years before. Jude, uber-wealthy Hoke, and failing mechanic Frayne are gathered, post-funeral, in the same basement, recollecting dark events from 14 years earlier. There are confessions to be made and dirty laundry to be aired. But how much did Jude know already?
This synopsis, implying as it does the existence of a level of dramatic tension in the plot, does more justice to the story than it deserves.
In fact, almost every choice the characters make in The Breach is either non-sensical or wholly devoid of convincing explanatory motivation. There is an entire genre of Horror film whose narrative structure relies entirely on teenagers making very stupid choices, but it is fair to say few cook up such a bubbling brew of improbable decision-making as this does. And it is all telegraphed so far in advance that the wait for characters to catch up with the plot is, at times, deeply tedious.
The story is half told in forward motion in 77 and half recounted in retrospect in 1991. This approach might have worked if any of the events of interest actually took place on stage, but they do not.
‘Do you remember when?’ or various versions of that, are the most common lines in the play. This happened, and then that happened, and then something else happened, and we actually see almost none of it. I found myself wondering whether, in structuring the play, writer Naomi Wallace made a deliberate choice to transpose verbs in the playwright’s injunction’s ‘show, don’t tell’.
The performances as a whole are committed and the cast, professional to a man and woman, managed to hide any embarrassment at the lines they were asked to recite. Designer Naomi Dawson’s set, a stark prison-like space, overlooked by pitiless stark lighting, was the one highlight of the evening.
I am not sure what the audience made of it. Anecdotally I would guess the number who chose not to stay for the second half seemed quite significant. I wonder whether it might make sense for the Hampstead to just run this though in one and ditch the break completely.
See it for yourself – you might find something there that I missed.
WRITER NAOMI WALLACE
DIRECTOR SARAH FRANKCOM
DESIGNER NAOMI DAWSON
Acton ’77 CHARLIE BECK
Jude ’91 JASMINE BLACKBOROW
Hoke ’77 ALFIE JONES
Hoke ’91 TOM LEWIS
Frayne ’91 DOUGGIE MCMEEKIN
Acton ’77 STANLEY MORGAN
Jude ’77 SHANNON TARBET
Duration: 2 hours 10 mins. One interval.
Full Disclosure: I paid full box-office price for the ticket.
