Off the King's Road (Jermyn Street Theatre)
What do you do when your beloved wife of 38 years passes away from terminal cancer? Well, according to this mildly amusing if highly improbable tragicomedy, you head across the Atlantic with a load of prescription drugs, an inflatable sex doll and a framed photograph of the deceased in your suitcase. At least, that's what Californian business man Matt Browne does, along with befriending the crazy cat lady from the same hotel corridor and hiring a Russian hooker, all the while maintaining regular Skype contact with his excruciatingly vague therapist (film star Jeff Bridges via a TV screen).
This might sound like the set-up for a knockabout farce but writer Neil Koenigsberg gives us instead a gentle, frustratingly episodic piece that frequently strains credibility, and feels as though it wants to be more eccentric and outrageous than it actually is. Without giving too much away, it's never clear what motivates Browne to do things like returning to the Russian prostitute solely to give her a bracelet, and his apparent attack of ill health (is it a heart attack? is it a seizure? does this mean we can go home soon?) just sort of happens and is then bizarrely abandoned. Elsewhere, elements of the play – a brick hurled through a hotel room window, an Ingmar Bergman-inspired nightmare sequence, a character habitually taking her beloved cat to the cinema in an outsize bag – are respectively insufficiently dramatic, sinister or funny enough to be truly engaging.
Alan Cohen's listless, tonally uncertain staging certainly doesn't help matters, lacking any real pace or energy. Claire Lyth's Chelsea hotel room set is rather nice though, successfully suggesting boutique style on a budget.
As Browne, Michael Brandon seems laid back to the point of lethargy at the beginning of the play but warms up nicely, and is quietly affecting in his scenes with Diana Dimitrovici's oddly touching Russian. Luke Pitman works very hard as an almost sinisterly obsequious hotel employee, and generates the few laughs that are to be had. It is a bit depressing to see an actress of the quality of Cherie Lunghi playing the bonkers widow Ellen, forever looking for her missing cat or trying to entice Browne to a one man Japanese version of Hamlet (yes really). She gives a sweet, well judged performance but is frankly wasted on this kind of material.
Koenigsberg's piece has already received productions in New York and Los Angeles, and I would imagine that it plays better in the States, as the touristy name-dropping of London sights, attractions, even shops, wears a little thin when you are actually watching the show in London. As it stands, the whole thing needs to be faster, funnier, bolder.
Off the King's Road runs at the Jermyn Street Theatre until 25 June.
