Christian Slater as Buddy Ackerman in Swimming with Sharks

Swimming with Sharks
Venue: Vaudeville Theatre
Where: West End
Date Reviewed: 17 October 2007
WOS Rating:
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Reader Reviews: View and add to our user reviews

It’s okay but it’s not great. And in the end it’s really not a patch on the film. Swimming with Sharks (1994) – one of Kevin Spacey’s stunning early successes – has been adapted and slightly updated by playwright Michael Lesslie as a vehicle in which bad boy Christian Slater – taut body, big head, great energy – takes up residence again in the West End.

One has to applaud a project that re-acquaints us with one of the capital’s finest theatres for new plays. The charming Vaudeville has been home to Stomp for the past five years (which is about five years too many in my view) and owners Nica Burns and Max Weitzenhoffer were almost falling over themselves to help the first night audience to their seats. Not a dustbin lid in sight.

Slater plays foul-mouthed, abusive Hollywood executive Buddy Ackerman who inducts new assistant Guy (Matt Smith) into the jungle ethics of bad behaviour in the movie business; Guy falls in with an ambitious producer Dawn Lockard (Helen Baxendale), whose Afghani film project he takes up while falling in love – with her.

Lesslie’s script, apart from a few gratuitous references to people like Paris Hilton (like, why?), is faithful to the original except in one crucial respect: it tells the story chronologically whereas George Huang’s film is brilliantly structured as both re-cap and catch-up: the opening credits roll over the corpse and we see how Guy is pushed to murder as a torture campaign washes back over the justification for it.

Those later scenes, where Spacey turns the tables on Guy while enduring torture by paper cuts on his face and tongue, are highly dramatic, and surprisingly skated over in the stage version, which just flattens out into far too rapid grand guignol. Director Wilson Milam indulges his taste for gothic without exploiting the psychological mind games.

The production looks good with a sleek design of Hollywood offices and peripheral furniture by Dick Bird, but never really conveys the gleeful sadistic nastiness that drives Guy to do what he does. Slater plays with energetic aplomb, but he can’t hold a candle to Spacey for satanic weirdness, even if he does tinker with little wind-up toys on his desk, or proudly proclaim that he hasn’t made his own cup of coffee since 1993.

The play makes clearer the likelihood of Buddy fabricating the story about his wife’s gang rape and murder. But it also suffers from Baxendale’s Dawn not fully articulating the ambiguous relationship she has with both men. And while Matt Smith is good and geeky in the early part of the play, you simply don’t get the idea of him growing into the monster who’s taught him all the rudiments of rudeness.

- Michael Coveney

Reader Reviews

Score	Comment	Date
	Good play, fast-paced and great acting from the entire cast. - houndtang	17 Jan 08
	My memory of the original film is pretty hazy but I am sure that Kevin Spacey played Buddy as an insidious, relentlessly sarcastic bully, whilst Christian Slater is shouty and physical. He also switches to ingratiating far too quickly to try to enlist Guy's support with a movie he needs to rescue his career. Matt Smithh, usually so good, is even worse conveying little sense of the youthful idealism necessary if the transformation into a crazed avenger is to be believable. Instead he is clearly a Buddy wanabe from the outset making the "twist" at the end depressingly predictable. Stylishly designed and played at a cracking pace but why not just rent the DVD? - David Baxter	20 Dec 07
	Stinker! Dire script and Slater's execrable acting is even worse than in the deplorable "Cuckoo's Nest".God help the future of plays in the West-End. NO STARS ! - Joesmith	11 Dec 07
	Fantastic! Christian Slater is a class act. We hope he does more theatre in the future. - Prue	06 Dec 07
	Fantastic! Christian Slater is a class act. We hope he does more theatre in the future. - Prue	06 Dec 07
	Swimming with Sharks is just the show I needed to put me in the Halloween spirit! No, there are no ghosts or goblins, but this spine-tingiling thriller had me gripped and guessing until the last moment. Christain Slater is absolutley superb as Buddy Ackerman, the typical Hollywood 'shark' of a boss, and Matt Smith also turns in a very fine performance! Swimming with Sharks is not to be missed, especially this time of year! - Harper	31 Oct 07
	Dreadful. Slater mugs, Baxendale is wooden and the whole thing is directed with a riduculous, hyper inflated machismo. See the film instead. - Neill	22 Oct 07
	Great stuff which moves along at a good pace. A generous helping of humour in the first act and some tough scenes in the second. Christian Slater is excellent. Well worth seeing. - Michael Best	18 Oct 07
	Thought the cast was tremendous...never saw the movie, so I don't have a point of reference for the complaints in the review. The play was entertaining throughout and made for a great night. - Shane	18 Oct 07
	The critics are whinging that the 'playhouses' are filling up with musicals and it is true that 3 of the 5 Nimax theatres are. Then they whinge that a play that is an adaptation of a film is not a new play (weren't most of Shakespeare's plays adapted from other sources?). Then they whinge that it's only on as a 'star vehicle' for Christian Slater (are Macbeth, King Lear and the forthcoming Othello star vehicles for Messrs Stewart, McKellern and McGregor respectively). Yawn.... This is a play in a playhouse but it doesn't please the critics. The critics like plays like The Enchantment (goodness knows why) and the public like plays like Swimming with Sharks. Its not ground-breaking, but it is a proper play with characters and a story. I didn't find the twists as predictable as the critics - I'm sure that's because I'm not as intelligent as the 'old white men'. Far from being a 'star vehicle', all three central performances are excellent. It could have been tightened up a bit, but on the whole it's a decent night out and its a play in a playhouse and the paying punters will probably feel they've had a good night. Don't be sheep - go and make up your own mind (unless you liked The Enchantment, in which case you will be severely over-stimulated by this). Oh, and the American accents are a lot better than Glengarry Glen Ross - but Mamet's more fashionable. - Gareth James	18 Oct 07
	Sorry, I can only comment on the first act -- I left at the interval. Cast was top notch, most esp. Christian Slater. But the script!!! By the interval I didn't care who on the stage survived, as long as I did (when I did by leaving). Get a better play next time gang. - Terry Johnson	07 Oct 07

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