Reader Reviews
Terre Haute (Trafalgar Studios (previously the Whitehall), West End)
Back to Show Details| Score | Comment | Date |
 | I went primarily to see this play because of Peter Eyre, whom I had seen play the inquisitor in the magnificent production of Don Carlos at Sheffield. His performance frightened the life out of me then! Eyre is an actor with great stage presence, and a wonderful, mellifuous speaking voice, perhaps, the finest on the British stage today. Up against him is the newcommer Arthur Darvill whose performance simply got better and better as the play progressed, and whom by the end of the piece scored a victory over Mr Eyre. I believed in Darvill's cold, taut performance as Harrison waiting his inevitable fate on Death Row. Whereas Eyre's James seemed too bored to care very much about Harrison's character at all. His droll, dry delivery made it seem as unlikely that he would have crossed the road to interview him let alone fly all the way from Paris. I wondered what the writer was trying to get across in the play. Was it some theory or other he has on homosexuality? There is an overt homoeroticism in the hunky Harrison, unfulfilled sexually, caged up in front of the voyeuristic James. Because of that White's play seems to appeal to homosexual men, of a certain age, (there were enough of us in the audience the night I went), rather than getting into the mind that motivates a man into mass murder. I wondered as I left the theatre if White would have written this play at all if McVeigh, whom the character of Harrison is based, had been fat and ugly? - rds | 31 May 07 |
