Midlife madness

Cloaca is bogged down by too much wordplay
Claire Allfree|Metro10 April 2012

Kevin Spacey has made a safe choice with his debut as artistic director for the Old Vic: a somewhat flabby contemporary comedy about four fortysomething male friends, simultaneously suffering a personal midlife crisis.

Pieter is a gay civil servant facing financial ruin over charges of misappropriating art from the council repository. He calls his old friend Tom - a lawyer - only to discover he has been recently hospitalised with manic depression. That Pieter was unaware of this sets the narrative tone for Maria Goos's play which, in testing the bonds of 20 years of male friendship, finds areas of strength, jealousy and simmering tension.

Spacey's cast, which includes Stephen Tompkinson and Neil Pearson, is good at conveying deceit and delusion but Spacey's production has the glossy realism of a sitcom. In places, it is also laboured where it needs to be pacey. Goos's script is not funny enough to serve its overall jocular tone, nor astute enough to differentiate her play from other portraits of midlife crises. Spacey surely has his reasons for kicking off with a play that has the cosy anonymity of a putative commercial hit but here's hoping he has more exciting cards up his sleeve.

Until Dec 13, Old Vic, Waterloo Road SE1, Mon to Sat 7.30pm, Wed and Sat mats 2.30pm, £10 to £40 (limited availability).

Tel: 0870 060 6628. Tube: Waterloo

Cloaca

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