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5 hours ago
8
The Donmar has had mixed results adapting leftfield films such as Force Majeure and The Fear of 13. But this production, based on the 2018 Danish movie Den Skyldige (by Gustav Möller and Emil Nygaard Albertsen), is a fantastically theatrical experience, part crime thriller and part ghost story.
At 70 minutes, it is shorter than the film but arguably more devastating, with the kind of razor suspense that fills you with dread and leaves you palpitating. As a critic who takes copious notes, I emerged at the end of the show with a near empty notebook as I was too absorbed to look away.
In what you could call a control-room procedural, the incomparable Russell Tovey plays a night-shift police officer, Joe. The plot brings two central twists, one around him and the other connected to the emergency call he receives from Emily. She has been abducted, she says, and her children are alone at home. Joe digs – deeper than he probably should. It becomes evident that he is taking too much of the case into his own hands and breaking rules. Is he an obsessive? Is he a good or a bad cop? We are kept guessing. When the twist to Emily’s story comes, it is unexpected and horrifying.
In Chloë Moss’s adaptation, Joe is more stroppy and volatile than the original character. The rest of the office is empty and Joe speaks to the various drunks or time-wasters who call in with a dead-eyed monotone. But we learn more about him, with an additional storyline about his family life which draws some parallels to Emily’s story. Moss manages to add the desperation and helplessness of those suffering extreme mental states and the sense of desertion they feel from wider systems. It is subtle social commentary but feels human and utterly tragic.
We also feel Joe’s wordless sense of guilt. He has done something wrong, and is due for a court hearing the next morning. There is a murkiness around his case that lies unexplained and adds to the tension.
And what tension. You feel it on the skin. It is raised from the off and kept high. Much of that is down to Tovey’s absolutely command as he sucks us in. But the direction by Punchdrunk founder Felix Barrett is expert too. This is a show dependent on technology – Alex Eales’ set incorporates the gadgetry and gear of a control room. There’s a high risk for the various phone calls to fall out of sync but all of it works immaculately. Anna Watson’s lighting design uses a spotlight in the emotionally high-pitched moments, then dims down again to lugubriousness and mystery. There is a final reveal, beyond that in the film, which makes a theatrical flourish.
Joe’s revelation is the only thing that grates here and demands further explanation. It sounds ideological, too, as if coming out of the mouth of the writer rather than the character – a commentary on police violence but with no context and a scenario that is less likely when transposed to London. That criticism is on a formal, perhaps logical, level. On a purely human one, this is the most thrilling and visceral drama. Not a minute wasted, not a beat missed. No less than a white knuckle ride.
