Collision is conclusive proof that while you can take the man out of Footballers' Wives, you can't take Footballers' Wives out of the man. In Nathan Constance's case this is no bad thing. His nervous young pro, Ian Walmsley, stood leagues above the rest in that preposterous TV series, and he brings similar skills to the part of crackhead D in Dominic Leyton's debut play.
It's what we can only presume to be an atypical D-day. For in the middle of his squalid King's Cross squat stands besuited, middle-class, well-spoken Horatio, who understandably likes to be known as Tom. Tom wants to buy a gun; D just happens to have one. The only hitch is that said firearm belongs to former UDA hardman Hoodwink, and is sought by the police as a suspected murder weapon.
Leyton proves adept at the growing rifts between D and Tom but fails ultimately to mould them into a convincing dramatic whole. The collision of the title can be seen as a reference to the weight of societal expectation oppressing both men, burdens that are not as dissimilar as they first appear, but Leyton is unable to stop his script tending towards the sanctimonious and reductive. "If I'd had the opportunities you had, I wouldn't be a crackhead," says D, in an unhappy example of an explanatory note being turned into a line of dialogue.
Director John-Paul Cherrington keeps his trio of actors whizzing around Isabel Munoz's atmospheric set, from which all light switches and door handles have been removed for sale by D in desperate attempts to feed his habit. But it's Constance who appears destined for bigger things.
Collision
