ajhlovestheatre

A ROLE TO DIE FOR 

by Jordan Waller

directed by Derek Bond

Marylebone Theatre, London – until 30 August 2025

running time: 1 hour 45 minutes including interval 

https://www.marylebonetheatre.com/productions/a-role-to-die-for

I’ve no idea when Jordan Waller wrote this amiable Hollywood-adjacent comedy but A Role To Die For often seems approximately two decades old. Set mainly in the office of a fictional producer of the James Bond film franchise as one 007 passes the baton to the next, a lot of the tension and humour derives from the realisation that the role’s newest incumbent is Black and gay. Not too long ago that might have been shocking or at least surprising but in 2025 it’s hard not to feel, well, so what?!

It says much for the quality of the performances in Derek Bond’s production, partially recast from its premiere at Cirencester’s Barn Theatre, as well as the ongoing fascination with the machinations of showbiz, that A Role To Die For is still worth watching. Waller’s writing for Deborah, the embattled film producer who inherited her position from the late father who still very much influences her ongoing life, is expletive-strewn and waspishly amusing. Tanya Franks inhabits the role with a compelling nastiness and keen comic timing but is a nuanced enough actress to invest the character, who really is a piece of work, with a degree of warmth, and she makes vivid her feelings for her gay, socially conscious son (Harry Goodson-Bevan, excellent) whose values and beliefs are the very antithesis of her own. 

Franks is terrific and it doesn’t hurt either that Obioma Ugoala, as Theo, the actor up for 007, clearly has the looks, charisma and charm to plausibly play Bond in his own right. In a rare moment of calm in an otherwise pretty frenetic script, Waller gives him a sensitive speech about representation and what it would have meant to a youthful Theo to see a Black man in such a role, and Ugoala delivers it beautifully. Philip Bretherton is great value as Deborah’s co-producing cousin, perpetually on the verge of outraged hysteria but whose bumbling exterior belies a ruthless streak. 

More mildly engaging than outright hilarious, it’s an entertaining piece, with overtones of farce and thriller, that doesn’t tell us anything new or surprising, but rattles by agreeably. Running at less than two hours including interval, it doesn’t outstay its welcome either, although, for all of Franks’s skill, the sections where Deborah addresses her late father are pretty laboured, as is a jokey conclusion that suggests the writer wasn’t entirely sure how to end the play. The (frequently extremely rude) dialogue sometimes fizzes though.

If the energy in Derek Bond’s staging occasionally dips and Cory Shipp’s set falls some way short of conveying the luxury and glamour of what one imagines the premises of a high end movie company might be like, the performances carry the show. A Role To Die For won’t change lives, but for a spicy bit of undemanding popular culture-related fun, it does rather nicely.