Review The Secondary Victim

 A play dealing with the emotional and professional life of a beleaguered therapist ultimately disappoints Peter Barker.  

The Secondary Victim
by Matthew Campling

Confidentially Speaking
 https://www.parktheatre.co.uk/

The vulnerability of a professional therapist whose work with clients takes place behind closed doors takes centre stage in Matthew Campling's drama The Secondary Victim.

A woman psychotherapist with family problems of her own is accused by a client of inappropriate sexual behaviour towards him.

There is a lot of potential for an intriguing and credible story when both denial and charges of abuse depend on on one person's word against another.

With his own experience of disproven professional misconduct accusations, Campling could have written a fascinating insight into a normally hidden world.

The playwright's own varied career has also included a psychotherapy practice, work as a magazine agony uncle and a spell as an expert on chat shows.

Nevertheless, while the first half of this play lasting over two and a half hours, has absorbing moments, overall The Secondary Victim  is marred by a dramatically unsatisfying and implausible structure.

Despite this, director Matthew Gould has gathered together an impressive cast including Susannah Doye who gives a careful and precise performance as psychotherapist Ali.

After the complaints of the troubled patient, Hugo, played by Michael Hanratty, she is accused of  misconduct and brought before her professional association's disciplinary tribunal. 

However many of the situations forced upon the actors feel far-fetched and contrived, with the writer trying to shoehorn several of different plots into one.

Gary Webster as husband Victor makes valiant efforts as her husband  with a passionate portrayal of a loving spouse unhappy at sharing his wife with her professional duties as a therapist.

However the root of failed businessman Victor's jealousy and its exposition by Campling lacks credibility.

There are another couple of plots involving a patient Teddy - Christopher Laishley - facing criminal charges and the personal relationship of Ali's own therapist with another therapist. 

The latter has some comedy but the script feels unreal. The play becomes muddled and overlong  with  longeurs and often a lack of substance and depth. Doyle as Ali is allowed to give the best performance but director Matthew Gould seems to struggle with the clunky writing.

The subject matter has potential but the work feels very much like a play in development rather than a finished piece and The Secondary Victim garners a red light.

Review Richard II

Richard II

by William Shakespeare

Through The Looking Glass

www.arcolatheatre.com

Order, order! Along to the Arcola Theatre cum House of Commons for this updating of Richard II for the Netflix, boxed set generation directed by Jack Gamble and Quentin Beroud.

It's a pared down version, structured around 24 hour BBC-style breaking news (video design: Sofi Berenger), shoehorned into a US-type political thriller format along the lines of the West Wing or House of Cards (US or UK).

After the death of a political heavyweight, King Richard (Tim Delap) is called on to arbitrate between his two cousins, Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk (David Acton), and Harriet Bolingbroke (Hermione Gulliford) - the latter a blonde female power player, all sharp suits and stilleto heels. Richard fails to grasp the threat posed by this family rift and leaves himself open to rebellion and a coup.

It's a pity the reimagining remains so reliant on pre-existing formats. For  looking more closely at the parliamentary set up, the bars, the debates and question times, the division bell and so on might have reaped benefits for the logic of the tale.

As it is, we have to accept a parallel universe where cousins like Cameron and Johnson (yes, they really are cousins!) do not simply jibe with words and where murder is not out of place.  Where (the closest to a death-in-office we could think of) the death of a party ;leader like John Smith is definitely not from natural causes.

The play starts promisingly with Shakespeare's own lines talking  of receipts echoing the expenses' crisis and disenchantment over a country "leased out", giving reasons why the nation might be ripe for change.

But it's the characters who are more credible than a shaky political drama format and this unbalances the play. Nevertheless, Hermione Gulliford is a striking tactical female Harri Bolingbroke.

Her ascent up the greasy pole gives the play its trajectory and allows also a tantalising glimpse of Richard's wife Isabel (Natasha Bain) as a politician trying to galvanise her born-into-the-role husband.

Yet the change of sex for Bolingbroke also sets up scenarios which feel, to us, like missed opportunities.

When Richard is dislodged by nefarious means, we were waiting for a glimpse of vulnerability from Harri. As a woman in a violent man's world, a politician who fears the situation has run away from her and the possibility striking her she might be being used and could be sacrificed.

But this never materialised and the transfer of power for Harri appears a seamless upward trajectory  regardless of gender.

Ignore the plot holes, concentrate on character,and you can appreciate the disciplined, careful performances, including those  of Tim Delap's Richard II and  Hayden Wood's Bagot, even if they feel sometimes out of context. 

This looking glass world is just a little too cracked and undetailed to hold our attention as a story. Still characters do have resonance, so in the end an amber light.