We’d feel short-changed if a family reunion in drama didn’t involve some skeletons tumbling out of a closet, but there can’t be an endless number and they do have to have some bearing on plausibility.
Unfortunately, The Heart of Things, by Giles Cole, doesn’t abide by these golden rules, rolling out a series of increasingly hard-to-believe twists over two hard-work hours.
The majority of the action is set in May 2010, over the weekend following the last General Election. This time frame appears to have been selected solely in the hope of some spurious topical authenticity, but politics has nothing to do with the story of two lost and lonely adult siblings at a party in the family home in Norfolk. Peter (Nick Waring) is sexually confused, to put it mildly, while Ros (Patience Tomlinson) attempts to placate their bitter, wheelchair-bound father (Ralph Watson). Tempers, ours as well as the characters’, start to fray.
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Knight Mantell’s production is encumbered with some very age-uncertain casting, which doesn’t help with the navigation of the seemingly inexhaustible list of issues that Cole wants to drag into just one play. For this spectator at least, at the heart of things was pure indifference.
Until April 4 (020 7287 2875, jermynstreettheatre.co.uk)
