Interview with Robert Sean Leonard and Paten Hughes at Riverside Studios – review

There’s a reason that screen-to-stage adaptations can be hard to get right. Squeezing the expansive freedom of film into the confines of a live performance is a big ask. Even more so when the story is being translated from the early 2000s to the tech-drenched world of a contemporary social media influencer.

For Teunkie Van Der Sluijs’s stage adaptation of the 2003 Dutch film (also given a Hollywood remake in 2007 with Steve Buscemi and Sienna Miller starring), this new setting is its smartest but most challenging swing.

Pierre (Robert Sean Leonard), a hardened political journalist who is firmly in the trenches of middle age and firmly out of favour with his editor, has been pulled off the Washington DC circuit just as the Vice President is impeached. He is sent – sulking and wilfully underprepared – to Brooklyn to interview 28-year-old influencer-turned-movie star, Katya (Paten Hughes), who has had her fill of being dismissed and misrepresented by journalists just like Pierre. A night of intellectual and sexual sparring, deal-brokering and confessions ensues, as they tussle for control of Katya’s (and later Pierre’s) story.

Hughes does a fine job of marshalling the slippery, steely Katya, who flits from seductress to child, airhead to interrogator with a constant performative glint in her eye. Leonard’s Pierre is less successful – too cautious to feel like a true match for Katya and too agreeable to make his ruthless actions later on seem plausible. And while Van Der Sluijs’s script gives the pair some fun repartee, for a play that hinges on chemistry, theirs doesn’t quite hit the mark.

Some of that, however, might be down to that big swing: making Katya an influencer rather than solely an actress, as in the films. It’s a trick that adds complexity to the power dynamic – Katya already controls her own narrative on her multi-million-follower-strong social media accounts, and can leave Pierre floundering on a surprise Instagram Live. And in today’s world of meticulous image curation online, it raises new questions about truth and authenticity, which are neatly mirrored by the events happening in Washington and revelations about Pierre’s own murky past.

But it also punctures the play’s tension. When Katya can always have the last word on Instagram, it’s hard to care about the cat-and-mousing. And perhaps most damagingly, it opens the door for a deluge of tech. Text messages, tweets, Instagram Lives, video entries (the list goes on) are endlessly projected over the back wall of Derek McLane’s sleek Brooklyn apartment set. Sometimes this is present through a live feed, so we see the characters’ faces projected in real time as they film themselves or each other. It’s overwhelming – both visually for the audience but also, one suspects, for the actors, who have to wrangle phones, mini ring lights, and camera trailing leads.

“We all want to be seen. Not watched. Not followed. Seen,” laments Katya. Sadly, it’s hard to truly see the intricate dance of power, sex and ethics at the heart of this play behind all of those extra screens.