STAGE
All New People
Duke Of York's
★★✩✩✩
IN A NUTSHELL
A quirky and promising set-up quickly loses its way in Zach Braff's brash but unfocussed tale of anguish, drugs and death.
REVIEW
Zach Braff is not John "JD" Dorian, zany doctor of Scrubs fame.
This much we know from his thoughtful indie hit Garden State in which he showed a propensity, not for pratfalls and antics, but introspection and self-destruction.
Such themes have not evaporated between that debut film and this Broadway transfer - and if that were in doubt the opening scene (the best of the lot actually) provides evidence.
We find the introspective and brooding Charlie hanging by the neck from an electric flex in a Long Island beach house, only saved from a ghastly fate by a fast-talking Brit estate agent (Eve Myles).
From this promising opening, matters descend somewhat into a humdrum and routine to-and-fro between the embittered Charlie, Myles's estate agent, a druggie firefighter called Mylon (Paul Hilton) and a hooker (Susannah Fielding) whose back stories are briefly but ineffectively told on film.
Lots of themes are raised and then dropped (religion etc) and everyone bellows their pain when faced with some catalyst or other but nothing really hangs together to form any kind of narrative and none of the characters is particularly likeable.
Braff, it seems, jotted down some ideas and then attempted, rather feebly, to link them together.
There are decadent laughs, fine performances and gruesome bits but this black comedy fades to grey and is quickly forgotten.
Until April 28. Go to atgtickets.com
