Against

This feels like precisely the sort of play that doesn’t reward an immediate review. Because it’s really complicated and everything to be disliked about it is on the surface. I’ll describe that first.

Luke is a tech billionaire (something future-y about rockets and AI and solar power – he’s Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg combined, basically) who hears a message from God and goes to where “there’s violence”, following a trail around America on a listening tour of stories of gun crime, campus sexual assault, and capitalism. That simple. He speaks, he listens, he has odd responses, he hears from God some more – some people like him, some people don’t. He is frustrated by his own process and his inability to have impact in the meaningful, seismic ways a Messiah might view as success. It’s a succession of two-handers. The set it sparse and rehearsal room-y. The play doesn’t move very fast in any direction. We aren’t clear what people want and why they are being so honest with this man.

That’s the superficial level.

And, at this level, I can see why people didn’t like it. Ben Whishaw’s Luke is never undercut – the play adores him and views him as a sincerely good man. It doesn’t sneer at him – the play doesn’t really sneer at all, even at religion – and it seriously goes about itemizing all the examples of violence and thinking about their causes and effects and the ludicrousness of the exercise. It fails at the level of plot. Of course it does. There are mishandlings of sexual politics and character arcs and he keeps having visions of God for Christ’s sake and the ending is a big bundle of nothing.

But. Well. Here’s a description:

A character called Anna (played wondrously by Emma D’Arcy – the whole cast are terrific and ne’er has the world ensemble felt more true, which is credit to Rickson’s direction in a play where one actor is so central to nearly every scene – right, sorry about that ugly parenthesis, you’ll feel the jolt back into the main sentence in a sec) is in a polyamorous relationship (there we are).

Anna is happy but frustrated that the relationship hasn’t found deeper codes of intimacy. Anna has also written a short story for a class about this. Anna’s teacher wants to talk about how to be sex positive, Anna wants to talk about their short story. The teacher suggests “radical intimacy”, Anna can barely move through the world any more. This story – which really has nothing to do with violence, the subject the play is about – takes up a lot of plot. We spend all our time at the campus talking about it or around it. In a world of missiles and nuclear submarines, Shinn moves here and has quiet conversations about theory and praxis.

And I think this choice – one of many examples – speaks to seriousness. This play is serious. It has serious intentions and beliefs and is serious about talking at stuff, not around it. It is as deep as it is broad and when it comes up against a hurdle, it doesn’t vault over it to get back to the plot, it carefully plonks itself down and talks about all the difficult stuff. So, you could easily lose faith. There are conversations where nothing is happening and people are telling you long stories about dreams they had and watches stop then start again and the play doesn’t have the good British sense to laugh at itself and have done with it. And as difficult things resonate against each other and the strange dreaminess of the whole thing smashes up against the real-worldness of it, it really reminded me of Obsession, that awful Jude Law vehicle. But where that play couldn’t care less about its substance, this play was consistently rewarding my attention and my faith.

I came out not liking it all that much. And I woke up the next day still thinking it through and not liking it, but finding so much to chew on and unfold. This play rewards its audience for their faith in its depth, its integrity, its (I’m going full American) sensuality.

It’s such an admirably strange failure.  

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Against is at the Almeida Theatre until the end of the month. They didn't get back to me about comps, so you can Google them yourself.

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