The Weatherman review: Well-plotted play leaves a troubling taste in the mouth

A leaflet urging action on modern slavery is handed to audience members on the way in: a guilty acknowledgment, perhaps, that Eugene O’Hare’s comedy-drama uses a trafficked child as a plot device.

This is an impressively crafted debut with a fine cast, smoothly directed — and smoothly justified in a foreword to the playtext — by Alice Hamilton, but it leaves a troubling taste in the mouth.

Losers Beezer and Archie bicker in their bedsit until their gangster landlord Dollar and his bagman Turkey appoint them guardians to a 12-year-old Roma girl, Mara. Although they all feel guilty about what she’s been brought to London for, this isn’t really a play about child prostitution. Mara is just a means to get the four men together to indulge in Tarantino-esque banter about nothing and long, beautifully paced monologues about love and life.

The play is well written and plotted, and you can see why a quartet of dependable character actors including Mark Hadfield (artfully dissipated Beezer) and Cyril Nri (sharply grinning, self-excusing Turkey) were attracted to it. But for every moment where you’re caught up in the mood, there is an equal and opposite moment of jolting tonal glibness. These are quirky, amusing, detailed lowlifes! But in front of them is a mute girl scrubbing at her crotch.

I’m usually fine with juxtapositions of humour and brutalisation in Shakespeare and the aforementioned Tarantino, but I think this show crosses a line. But I’ll be interested to see what O’Hare does next.

Until Sep 14 (020 7870 6876, parktheatre.co.uk)