If ever there were a show where one wishes one could have spied on rehearsals, this is it. Unreachable, written and directed by Anthony Neilson, was born out of improvisation – a high-risk, devised piece. Matt Smith plays Maxim, a self-involved film director approaching his work with a pretentiously pained expression. Dressed in black, Smith is irresistibly useless, looking for the right quality of light while leaving his producer and cameraman in the dark. The play explores what it means to act – and act up – with unpredictable, entertaining, burgeoning consequences.
It starts with Natasha (Tamara Lawrance) auditioning for “Child of Ashes”, a film set in the near future after a virus has killed off most of the population. The trauma her monologue describes – and which she acts with powerful emotion – is in crude contrast to Maxim’s spoilt attitude. So far, so satirically familiar. There are familiar characters here too. I half-recognise Amanda Drew’s smart (in every sense) Anastasia, the producer, and Richard Pyros’s Carl, her lover, a beleaguered cameraman. Genevieve Barr’s excellent Eva is one of the film’s sponsors and less familiar: a deaf woman who misses nothing.
But the play’s secret weapon is Jonjo O’Neill’s Ivan, nicknamed “the Brute”. Brought on set at the last moment, he is a Ukrainian actor with peroxide hair, a skin-tight shirt and a tiny white belt. He is spectacularly angry – a brilliant idiot. He combines self-aggrandising rhetoric with violent silliness. He kicks off at the audience, asking whether we are hoping he will “brighten this dirge” – and by “dirge” he means production. Whatever we were hoping, I have not laughed so helplessly in ages. O’Neill makes the evening unmissable.
