The Graft

Synopsis

After years of hard graft, Nick and Tammy Leary have got it made. When an intruder breaks into their house, Nick and Tammy's lives are turned upside down when Nick kills the young man. In this gripping dramatic thriller nothing is quite as it appears as the intruder's father embarks on a quest to discover why his son had broken into such a highly protected Essex property.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 18 February 2011

Graft as in hard, or graft as in skin? Not sure about either application in Martina Cole’s The Graft at Stratford East, a shamelessly crude and self-conscious adaptation by Patrick Prior of one of the novelist’s best-selling crime stories in “the dark side of Essex suburbia.”

There comes a point, actually, when the spin-off from Nick Leary’s murder of a young intruder suddenly takes on the possibilities of Jacobean tragedy: the action moves into the underworld of sex for money, “nonces,” pubs, clubs and cynical lifestyle; but there’s no flesh on the writing, no atmosphere in Ryan Romain’s staging , and the acting is fairly awful.

It’s all not so much a throwback to Joan Littlewood as a throw-up of a bad episode of EastEnders, a soap style raucously set by Jemma Walker’s strutting, bikini-clad Angela, Nick’s wife, introducing us, poolside, to the story and wrappin...

Read more of the review

Latest User Review

lalaa - 8 July 2011:

the book is a much better representation i say. have a read....

Read more and add your own review