"Master"-ful?

Speaking in Tounges - Duke of York Theatre - December 11th

So I'll be frank, the reason I was at the Duke of York Theatre was to see John Simm in person. I am a complete fanboy, he was excellent in 24 Hour Party People, Life on Mars and Doctor Who and I'd been meaning to see this for a long time. I'd been expecting a cop drama, as i'd read that Simm plays a detective, but what I got was more personal, stranger and unsettling than I could have ever imagined.

The play seems to cram in as many ideas as possible, and because of that, just barely makes sense. the basic plot is that two married couples, Leon (Simm) and Sonja (Lucy Cohu), and Pete (Ian Hart) and Jane (Kerry Fox), are on the rocks, and an unintentional wife swap occurs. However, only Leon and Jane go all the way, Pete and Sonja get cold feet and part into the night. After confessing, Jane and Leon go on to tell their partners of unsettling events that happened while they were away.

After that is where the play gets confusing, in the second act all four actors take on different roles that are from the stories told in the first, they spiral into other stories from those affected, before coming full circle back to the original characters. The play is technically impressive in many ways, the set design is inspired and the opening scene, a comment on how similar the swapped couples' night is, is a stunning show of the acting talent on display, however the plot just spirals into coincidence and interlinking and there is no satisfying clunk as everything falls into place. Call me a philistine, but I like my plays to make sense after the second half of the second act.

As I said before, the collective talent on display is ridiculous, the actors all make the best of a confusing situation and save it from being the impenetrable mess it could have easily been, but its not quite enough to make it an experience that genuinely draws you in and make you care about the characters introduced in the second half. But in conclusion, I'm glad I saw it. It was at least a solid character study that unfortunately tried to introduce too many ideas for its own good.