Red Speedo with Finn Cole at the Orange Tree Theatre – review

On one of the hottest days of the year so far, a gentle swim would have been most refreshing. However, in Lucas Hnath’s play Red Speedo, the water is a source of tension rather than respite. Matthew Dunster’s production of this sardonic sports thriller is spikily staged and performed in-the-round at the Orange Tree Theatre, with a real pool (a sleek set design by Anna Fleischle) and the smell of chlorine on stage.

Hnath’s play comprises short, staccato scenes. We’re launched into the middle of a row between rising swimming star Ray’s (Finn Cole) older brother – and lawyer – Peter (Ciaran Owens) and his Coach (no name given, played by Fraser James). Performance-enhancing drugs have been found in the club’s communal refrigerator and Ray’s sudden boost in performance makes him prime suspect. While Peter and Coach argue, Ray is silent and munching baby carrots; it’s remarkable how much stage debutant Cole conveys through being passive.

It requires a suspension of disbelief that Ray, an Olympic hopeful training at an elite club, isn’t already taking regular drug tests. The scenes are punctuated by an aggressive buzzer (sound design by Holly Khan) and a textured glass panel hanging from the ceiling heightens the sense of being institutionalised through sport.

The brothers grew up poor and Peter has emerged as a shady two-bit lawyer who could easily be one of Donald Trump’s hangers-on and wants to transition into athlete management (more profitable), seeing his brother as his potential cash cow. Ray, meanwhile, wants money so he can aspire to have a house, a car, a family – the accoutrements that might make him a “real person”.

As Peter puts it, Ray is “no scholar”, and that’s an understatement – he’s utterly lacking in common sense. However, Cole plays him as less of a jock than a young man who’s slipped through the net and only (barely) staying afloat (sorry) through his athletic skill that has the potential to be monetised. In order to stand out from the other anonymous bodies in the water, he has a giant, tacky sea serpent tattoo across his back – in part so that Speedo can manufacture a pair of trunks with the motif and everyone will know what it refers to.

There’s a filmic feel to the play and Lydia (Parker Lapain, also making her debut), Ray’s sports therapist turned girlfriend and original supplier, believes that her experience will be turned into a movie (if the Hollywood producer friend she talks about does dramatise it, he’s sure to run off with the idea and not give her a penny). It is hard to believe though that Lydia, however desperate to leave the country and start afresh, would entrust the hapless and essentially homeless Ray with her cat Colonel Fuzzman.

Culminating in an onstage fight (viscerally choreographed by Claire Llewellyn), it’s highly unusual for a play to feel too short. It would be good to hear more of Hnath’s cutting voice on this side of the pond (his A Doll’s House, Part 2 was staged at the Donmar Warehouse in 2022) and this piece is short, mostly sharp, and ultimately, a tad skimpy.