Raoul Moat set a grim record in 2010 by sparking the biggest manhunt in UK history. After almost seven days on the run, the chase ended when he took his own life. His last days are enacted as a posthumous courtroom drama in writer-director Robert Icke’s staging, looking back on the events leading up to Moat’s death but simultaneously travelling towards it.
Fresh out of prison and intent on hurting his ex-girlfriend because she had found a new partner, Moat murdered her boyfriend, left her in a critical condition and blinded a police officer, before hiding out in a corner of north-east England with a sawn-off shotgun.
Samuel Edward-Cook, as Moat, often speaks in direct address to the audience, while short scenes are enacted. All the while, a barrister stalks the stage to cross-examine, interrogate and undermine his account.
This story seems like a left-field choice for Icke, who excels at rewriting stage classics for modern times: last year’s sensational Oedipus is a case in point.
And as boldly high-wire as Icke undoubtedly is, this production is strangely plodding, a rather too expositional synthesis of events, despite the theatrical flourishes. It is neither revelatory nor emotional enough.
Edward-Cook is a striking physical presence, muscle-bound, sweat-slicked and ready to burst, but his ex-girlfriend Samantha Stobbart (Sally Messham) and her boyfriend Chris Brown (Leo James) are little more than triggers for his anger.
Every other character – from his mentally-fragile mother to a childhood version of himself – are brief and unrounded.
As promisingly as it begins – with Moat pacing behind a screen while aerial CCTV footage of him is projected on to the screen to suggest a sense of bifurcation and surveillance – the play as a whole is made up of dramatised summaries of Moat’s life.
He remains angry, distressed and disfranchised, but rather unknown beyond that – to himself and to us, it seems. He makes strained proclamations, variously calling himself a hunter-gather, the hulk, King Kong atop the tower, and Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. If the point here is that he defines himself as the monster other people see him to be, it is crudely made, and feels cliched.
Questions around toxic masculinity and crisis – especially in relation to class – are immensely timely, with the continuing online presence of Andrew Tate and the high suicide rates among men under 50.
Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne’s drama, Adolescence, recently laid the groundwork for discussion on how young boys and men move towards violence, misogyny and murder. But this play never quite delivers in its dramatic power or its psychological insights.
The production lacks pace too. Icke, usually so adept at suggesting the inexorable march of fate and time, uses screens to flash the date for each passing day as Moat heads toward his end, but this does not bring the charge it should.
Hildegard Bechtler’s non-realist set does clever work with the screens but even this does not bring the intensity it should.
There is one scene – in which the police officer, PC David Rathband, who is blinded, speaks of his experience in a dark auditorium – which is original and innovative. There are more such moments that come and go before the tone returns to flatness.
James Graham’s play, Punch, now showing at the Young Vic, shows the fallout of a crime and its intersections with masculine crisis. That story of restorative justice lends itself to resolution and forgiveness.
This story hangs in the air, unsure of – or opaque in – its intentions. Is this an anatomy of a breakdown? An investigation into the ways Moat was failed? Or a portrait of white, northern, working-class masculinity in extreme crisis? It seems like a bit of all, but not enough of one.
This is not the first attempt at dramatisation: ITV screened The Hunt for Raoul Moat in 2023 even as the local people of Rothbury – where Moat shot himself – complained it was all too raw to be turned into television. Maybe this is the case on stage, too.
• At the Royal Court, London, until 3 May.
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
