Distance from Here

Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things was, in my humble opinion, the best new play of last year. But his latest - again premiered at the Almeida where his extraordinary bash was also first seen - may yet prove to be the worst of this year.

The earlier pieces systematically drew in the audience, who were at once fascinated and appalled by the skewed worlds the playwright was presenting. But The Distance from Here lives up to its title and keeps you at a distance, constantly pushing you away.

While LaBute's has undoubted gifts for minutely recording the inarticulate, jangling vernacular of a certain kind of everyday speech, with dialogue that is frequently no more than surly expressions like "whatever" and "ya know", this time round this isn't anchored to either rich characterisation or a compelling plot. It's difficult to tune into who these people are and why we should be remotely interested in them. LaBute, as evidenced by earlier plays and masterful movies, has proved adept at creating a foreboding sense of unease and, while he hasn't lost that sense of suspense here, it's neither earned nor rewarded in what follows.

In the process, his portrait of drifting, disaffected American youth itself emerges as curiously listless and unmotivated. Though it opens at a zoo - and frequently returns there, especially for a climactic scene of over-calculated horror - the play is no day at one for the audience.

There's no one much to like: Darrell (Mark Webber) spends his days hanging around with his friend Tim (Jason Ritter) and his nights at home with a mother (Amy Ryan who looks barely older than him), his mother's new boyfriend Rich (Enrico Colantoni) and his step-sister Shari (Ana Reeder), whose newborn baby's cries are constantly ignored. When Darrell discovers that his girlfriend Jenn (Liesel Matthews) has been seen in a homemade porn film, it precipitates a crisis that leads to devastating results.

Bruised and damaged, this crowd don't make for fun company, though the all-American cast fielded in David Leveaux's gruellingly authentic production perform with the kind of acute naturalism that makes an unpleasant play even more forcefully unpleasant.

But LaBute - whose speciality is showing the badness human beings are capable of - hasn't persuaded me this time round that it's worth showing so grimly.

- Mark Shenton