ajhlovestheatre

MATES IN CHELSEA

by Rory Mullarkey

Directed by Sam Pritchard

Royal Court Theatre, London – until 16 December 2023

https://royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/mates-in-chelsea/

“It’s not like we’re going to be winning any theatre awards any time soon” says Laurie Kynaston’s debauched modern day fop, improbably disguised as a Russian oligarch visiting a dilapidated stately home on the North East coast of England, in a meta moment from this strange but appealing new comedy at the Royal Court. “I highly doubt we’ll be nominated” rejoinders Natalie Dew as his Sloane Ranger-ish heiress girlfriend, also in disguise as an oligarch, this one the bearded, seafood-obsessed brother of Kynaston’s. They’ve got a point….well, unless this years illustrious ceremonies add a category for ‘Weirdest Play of the Year’.

Rory Mullarkey’s comedy starts out like latter day Oscar Wilde with upper crust characters making epigrammatic pronouncements about themselves and each other in information-stuffed language heightened to several levels above realism (“So I have you to blame for the ignominy of my son being referred to as a transitive verb” “I’d better be on my way. I have a late badminton appointment and I’m anxious to make the East Coast mainline before the clientele start getting too inebriated”). It’s often very funny, especially when the toffs are contrasted with Amy Booth-Steel’s lugubrious, Communist housekeeper, even though taking the mickey out of the self-regarding, spendthrift upper classes feels a bit like shooting fish in a barrel. Mullarkey’s way with language is a thing of considerable joy, but Sam Pritchard’s production, and some of the acting, doesn’t feel sharp or savage enough as yet, although I suspect that will come as the run progresses.

The action moves from Theodore ‘Tug’ Bungay’s split level Chelsea pad (striking set design by Milla Clarke) to the family pile, Dimley Grange in Northumberland, which Tug’s mother, the fearsome Lady Agrippina (Fenella Woolgar, finding pleasing layers in what might have been a one note characterisation) is selling off to the oligarchs to replenish the coffers, leaving her free to run off to South Korea. It’s all quite bonkers, especially when a couple of Russian assassins, a ton of explosives and a lesbian love affair between Agrippina and her account manager are thrown into the mix. While it’s never less than entertaining – think Spitting Image without the puppets as reimagined by an unholy triumvirate of Tom Stoppard, Ray Cooney and Monty Python – it doesn’t ever quite lift off the ground the way farce should, and is too frantic and unfocused to allow the more serious elements (and yes that are some) to really hit home.

Technically, Pritchard’s staging is a bit messy and uncertain in tone, but manages to create a real sense of forlorn devastation in a final sequence where a newly impecunious Tug complains to his mother that he’s scared, and uncertain of his identity. Her response – “your grandfathers fashioned the whole world, just so you could be exactly as you are. It was everyone else who always had to pretend. Maybe it’s your turn now” – strikes me as the crux of Mullarkey’s play, a wishful, two-fingered gesture to a UK governed and dominated by over-privileged, under-civilised posh boys. It’s genuinely, and unexpectedly, illuminating and touching.

As the show doesn’t fully cohere at present, it’s best to enjoy it as a series of frequently inspired individual elements. For instance, George Fouracres, in the performance of the night as Tug’s deeply eccentric, globe-trotting, lovelorn best friends, gets a brilliant second half monologue, a surreal masterpiece of storytelling and comic pathos about a misremembered Soviet Union childhood, that turns out to be a total red herring, but is still something to savour.

Fouracres is sensational as a character whose antecedents can be traced all the way back to the outrageous, irresistible fops of Restoration Comedy. His Charlton Thrupp is spoilt, as childlike as he’s sophisticated, and quite mad. Fouracres invests him with a wide-eyed, debauched charm, and a baroque vocal delivery that delights in the language and finds the strangest of emphasis on words and syllables. In short, he is an unforgettable comic creation and worth the price of a ticket by himself. Kynaston and Dew are both fine actors and have some great moments but, as yet, seem a little tentative where they should be fearless. Booth-Steel is a hoot, and a welcome touch of reality amongst all the campery, and there’s nice work from Karina Fernandez and Philipp Mogilnitskiy as a couple of understandably bewildered outsiders.

The overriding sense of Mates In Chelsea is that not everyone connected creatively with the production seems to be on the same page. It’s too clever and entertaining to write off, but too scattershot to be fully satisfying. I’m tempted to go back late in the run to see if it has coalesced a little more, as at present it’s neither rollicking nor vicious enough. Still, it’s an intriguing, intermittently hilarious, evening that’s equal parts head-scratcher and side-splitter.