Can Raoul Moat - who shot and wounded his ex-partner Samantha Stobbart, killed her boyfriend Chris Brown and blinded policeman David Rathband in Northumberland in 2010 days after leaving prison - tell us anything about modern masculinity or the human condition? That’s the kernel of writer/director Robert Icke’s tricky new play, an original script after a string of stunningly reworked classics.
It’s a tense and unnerving 100 minutes, driven by a frankly terrifying performance from a pumped-up, bullet-headed Samuel Edward-Cook as Moat. But where Icke brought phenomenal clarity to Aeschylus, Chekhov and Shakespeare, he makes the story here as muddy as possible. Was Moat failed by society, or was he a “callous murderer, full stop, end of story” as then-PM David Cameron put it? Neither? Both? Icke isn’t saying.
Moat himself narrates, stepping in and out of the action, prowling the forestage and eyeballing us, but his tales of an unhappy childhood, unheard cries for help and a lifetime of police persecution ring hollow, or at least inadequate. There’s little tonal let-up from his seething, baleful fury: even the moments when he plays with his young kids seem ominous.
At times the show resembles a dark-side version of Jez Butterworth’s Jerusalem, another tale of an outlaw pushing a self-serving myth - especially when Moat holes up in the countryside with two dimwit hostages/accomplices. One of them is played by Danny Kirrane, almost riffing on the role he played in Jerusalem on its initial run at this theatre and in the West End revival.
The message here is that all narratives are untrustworthy. Northumberland Police’s conduct of the manhunt for Moat (the largest ever in the UK), and the authorities’ exoneration from all blame, smell fishy. Stobbart lied to Moat that Brown was a copper to scare him away. Female lawyers stroll on to cross-examine Moat but we know he never went back to court or prison.
The auditorium, softly lit throughout, is plunged into darkness for a monologue by the blinded Rathband, who killed himself after tabloids labelled him a love cheat. Meanwhile Facebook groups acclaimed Moat a folk hero.
There’s even a tragicomic touch: the thing I mostly remember about the case is that confused ex-footballer Paul Gascoigne turned up at the six-hour, open-air standoff between Moat and the police with a fishing rod and a chicken dinner to persuade the fugitive to surrender. Icke gives us a conversation between the two, and one between Moat and his absentee father; then tells us they never happened.
The production has a familiar Ickean starkness, with a mesh cage from designer Hildegard Bechtler whose walls double as screens for CCTV footage, social media messages, or sudden, blinding white-outs. A drumbeat and a bassline rumble underneath the action, sometimes out of synch, and songs by The Four Seasons and The Who are tactically deployed.
Before the last of many threats to commit suicide, sawn-off shotgun barrel socketed under his jaw, Moat has a speech about the crisis of masculinity. It feels timely, but like everything here it’s ambiguous, half-plea and half threat. Icke is one of the most gifted theatre artists working today – his magnificent 2024 Oedipus has just won a string of awards – but for all its intensity, Manhunt feels like it’s hedging its bets. Or worse, can’t make its mind up.
