The Snail House. Hampstead Theatre.

The trouble with being Richard Eyre, the hugely lauded theatre, opera, film, and television director, is that audiences generally expect whatever you come up with to be dazzling. Sadly, The Snail House, only the second original play ever written by Eyre, is manifestly not a shining example of theatrical distinction. In fact, particularly in the second half, it is out-and-out dull. There are some good performances, but one cannot help feeling that even if an unknown name been on the writer and director’s chair, the play’s middling critical reception would have been more or less the same.

Distinguished, blunt-talking, and pugnacious paediatrician Neil Marriot (Vincent Franklin) is holding a party to celebrate his recent Knighthood, an award he earned through sterling work as a government adviser during the pandemic. Deceived wife Val (Eva Pope), Tory special adviser son Hugo (Patrick Walshe McBride), and eco-warrior daughter Sarah (Grace Hogg-Robinson) each have their own long-standing frustrations with dad. Fuelled by champagne, childhood resentments, and bitter political differences, this is a family whose tensions are at breaking-point. Add into the sulphurous mix catering manager Florence (Amanda Bright) who has her own bone to pick with the doctor, flippant Irish waitperson Wynona (a delightful comic turn from Megan McDonnell) and her sidekick Habeeb (Raphel Famotibe).

The narrative set-up has promise and the show benefits from a brilliant central performance from Franklin as the pompous, defensive, and self-venerating Marriot. This is a man who can never admit he is wrong, regardless of the damage it does to those around him. But aside from a dig at the god-like aspirations of a certain type of ambitious medical professional, it is never clear what the play is supposed to be about. Eyre gives us a bit of Brexit-bashing, a poke at endemic racism in health research and in hospital provision for Britain’s minorities, a stab or two at climate crisis deniers and political disengagement in general, and a jab at helicopter parents. But it is a scattergun approach to targets that never really coalesces into a central theme. The flaw is made worse by a central storyline that fizzles out and some woefully underwritten subplots. At the end the feeling is pretty much, nice to look at, but so what?

Hogg-Robinson’s performance as determined and belligerent 18-year-old daughter Sarah is great, assisted by dialogue that smartly captures the messy and uneven transition between child and grown-up. She is certainly her father’s daughter and there is a welcome symmetry in the way events in their relationship unfold. Walshe McBride does not have much to do as Hugo, the less favoured of the doctor’s offspring. It is not his fault that the whimsical slightly camp Tory-boy he is asked to act out feels stereotyped and unreal; a gay character from a play written two decades ago. There is a hackneyed feel to the character of Val too. She is the kind of wife who puts up with a lifetime of living with a philandering husband out of duty, even love, and then chooses today, of all days, to threaten to walk out. It makes no sense.

The set is a nicely put together pastiche of a public school common room, with walls suitably lined by portraits of eminent and austere former headmasters. Plenty to look at when, as it often does, the actions gets a little bogged-down.

5 October 2022

Duration: 2 hours. One interval.

Written and Directed by Richard Eyre.