Polar Bears has its highs and lows

Exploration: May and Coyle as lead characters Kay and John
10 April 2012

In his novel The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, Mark Haddon sensitively portrayed a teenage boy who had what appeared to be Asperger's syndrome.

In Polar Bears, his first play, he turns his attention to another kind of psychological disability.

While the title may create expectations of a topical piece about climate change, it's nothing of the sort.

The image of the polar bear should here call to mind vulnerability — the hunter facing up to extinction, frequently at sea.

Additionally we may detect a slippery play on words, for what's laid bare seems to be bipolar disorder.

The note of caution is necessary — Haddon makes a point of avoiding labels.

Whatever the exact condition, the sufferer is Kay, a young woman from a fractured family whose identity is anchored by the creative gifts she believes she possesses.

Kay is poignantly realised by Jodhi May, an actor whose wonderfully expressive face and tonal range make her ideal as this mercurial character.

May's nuanced performance is matched by an articulate one from Richard Coyle as her boyfriend John, a bearded, brown-suited philosopher who takes a nerdy pleasure in the dense textures of reality.

Coyle switches from effortful joviality to tender concern, and May, described as the kite he's holding on to, flits from eloquent mania via cool resolve to snarling wretchedness.

There's scrupulous work, too, from Paul Hilton as Kay's abrasive brother Sandy, and as their mother Celia Imrie manifests an ironclad severity.

Jamie Lloyd's production strains for intensity. Performed on a sparse set that initially resembles a deserted dance studio and later evokes the crepuscular squalor of David Fincher's Seven, it's fierce and grisly.

Whilst Haddon's writing has both darkness and zest, it often seems exaggeratedly rhetorical.

There's humour and shrewd observation, but the narrative jumps around abruptly, and its philosophical allusions are clever rather than potent.

Elements of the production don't work. The echoey amplification of some passages seems pretentious. The music is overblown.

And at times the text feels like a commentary on its own gestures, uncomfortably self-conscious.

Most perplexing, though, is David Leon as a grungy Jesus, who professes to be an ex of Kay's and provides a whistlestop tour of the biology of a body's putrefaction.

His jarring presence is the mark of a play that teems with ideas yet lacks clarity.

Until 22 May. Information 0844 871 7624.

Polar Bears
Donmar Warehouse
Earlham Street, Seven Dials, WC2H 9LX

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