Review: THE MOTH at Finborough Theatre

Unfortunately what was originally a striking twelve minute monologue delivered direct to camera, assumes an altogether more stodgy consistency as a clunkily overwritten play of two meandering hours which at its worst moments, emulate Donald-Trump-at-a-lectern-deviating-from-the-autocue.

We open with a couple of disjointed background scenes during which the cardinal playwriting sin of excessive exposition is committed in a bid to tell us (rather than show us) pertinent facts. Thereafter the two-man exchange directed by Jake Murray takes place aboard a train carriage, where the seemingly chance encounter kicks-off a bizarre, decades-long interconnection which later includes a surprise home visit with a Luger pistol.

In the play’s opening half, a British journalist John Josana (Faz Singhateh) oozes intellectual, generational mistrust of white power, privilege and opportunity. When Marius Muller (Micky Cochrane) takes the seat opposite him in the train carriage, he absorbs oxygen as well as space, as a confident, gutturally-spoken, Afrikaan ex-special forces soldier. The air momentarily bristles and we find ourselves intrigued.

However, the opportunity is squandered and instead of reasons to develop feelings (animosity, concern, empathy) towards the characters, we are fed a didactic re-telling of South African unrest, Boer affiliations with Nazism, and a character’s hostile distaste for two-time Prime Minister Jan Smuts due to his love for the Brits. It’s only when the harsh recollections become more personal for the present day participants of the conversation, that the stiltedness has any chance to abate. These moments are assisted by screen imagery and efforts of the creative team: Amelia Mitchell, Paul C Clark and Simon Cole.

Both actors have absorbed the long and meandering dialogue well. However, the idea underpinning the meeting (which causes their life paths to overlap), feels intrinsically woolly, unfocused and worst of all, rather dull. There are plenty of fascinatingly contentious fringe productions running in London at the moment, but despite everyone’s best efforts and intentions here, this is not one of them. I neither cared for, nor cared about the protagonists, and by the end, hadn’t any greater understanding of the international geo-political environment which led to their meeting.

By the time the play attempts to breathe long-lost mother/son pathos into proceedings, my interest had evaporated and I was too irritated by the person on my right who had been frantically scribbling notes, to give a damn.

Thankfully, nights like this are infrequent, but when they happen, they remind me that not everyone is born to be a theatre playwright (or indeed critic), and not all subjects are destined to move effortlessly between different creative mediums. Tomorrow is another day, and I have it on good authority that Keira Knightley is determined to impress me — we shall see!

THE MOTH runs with interval at the (usually splendid) Finborough Theatre until 21st November.