STAGE Chimerica
Almeida Theatre
★★★★★
IN A NUTSHELL
This rousing and cinematic play aims to tell the story of two sparring countries with a snapshot of two driven men.
REVIEW
This is how plays should be. The politics and the personal. The big themes and the little lives. Geopolitics and KFC.
Playwright Lucy Kirkwood magnificently wrangles the economic struggle of the two superpowers and creates a mesmerising kaleidoscope of cultural confusion.
The script is rich with meaty discourse and witty, cynical sideswipes so its three-hour length whips by.
The title is coined from economist Niall Ferguson's conflation of the China and America but also, neatly, suggests "chimera" - a single organism composed of two different populations. Although there is an irony there (never the twain shall meet) that is the underlying subtext.
But the story starts simply. The story starts with a single image - a man defies the tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989.
In this fiction, the photograph was taken by US photo-journalist Joe Schofield (a compelling Stephen Campbell Moore) who is haunted by its potency.
When he returns to a transformed, choking Beijing, in 2012, midlife crisis is upon him as is the realisation that nothing he has ever done matches those 30 seconds in Tank Man's life.
It begins a destructive, blinkered quest to track down the iconic figure and make some sense of his own fractured existence. (After his 1989 masterpiece, this is the "difficult second album" according to pal Mel who signs up for the task but falters in the face of corporate and political opposition).
Meanwhile, in smoggy Beijing, Zhang Lin (Benedict Wong - brilliant) is haunted by that same day in 1989, the day that stole his wife, and his festering sadness turns to anger and then action and then rebellion.
Encapsulating the New York brownstones, strip joints, pap lines, lawyer's pads and smoggy high-rises this is necessarily cinematic in scope and attack. All this is aided by Lyndsey Turner's dynamic direction and the use of a vast, rotating Rubik's Cube of a set that introduces flashbacks, cut-aways and vignettes as well as hosting the main action.
The political never forgets the personal and the fractious relationship between driven Schofield and self-possessed consumer researcher Tessa (a scene-stealing Tessa Kendrick) grounds the sprawling, flinty drama.
Others deserving of a mention are Sean Gilder as cynical hack Mel Stanwyck and Trevor Cooper as weary editor Frank but there are no weak links.
The play ends with a telegraphed twist but, by then the urgency of the cast to tell this important story has enlightened and invigorated us sufficiently so that the cathartic climax becomes necessary rather than irksome.
Until July 6, almeidatheatre.co.uk
