Red Speedo – Orange Tree Theatre, London

Author: Lucas Hnath

Director: Matthew Dunster

The audience enters the auditorium to the sweet sounds of Roy Orbison, who promises us that we can have anything we want. And then, as the show gets going, the volume gets louder and louder. The speakers distort, the drummer sounds like he’s operating a machine press, and Roy could be the new frontman of Aerosmith. It’s very unsettling. And that’s the point, of course.

This is a play about athletic achievements built on doping. It’s about exploitation, reputation and brotherhood. It’s about ignorance and self-confidence, and about getting a contract with a swimwear manufacturer that results in your own personalized product line and big cash rewards.

It’s as if Abbott and Costello have developed a 90-minute crosstalk routine around drugs in sports and real-world ethical dilemmas. It’s fast and furious, the cast is highly skilled, the Olympic-sized swimming pool is represented by a wading pool-sized ditch that turns out to be just what you need, and it’s all wrapped up in a real-life slapstick battle. Domestic, small-scale, but with enough strange distortions to make it unsettling.

It’s a sight to behold. Skillfully played at a thousand miles an hour. But…

It tackles serious issues, raises real ethical dilemmas, and does absolutely nothing with them. It all ends in a slapstick fight and then it stops. Disturbing, but not in a good way. Lucas Hnath starts to dissect serious issues, albeit in a funny way, but doesn’t try to offer any conclusions beyond a carload of nonsense. That’s disappointing, because the issues he raises are worth pondering and the relationships he develops are important. He owes his considerable writing talent far more substance than this pocket-sized farce allows.

The cast – Finn Cole as the swimmer, Ciáran Owens as his agent/brother, Fraser James as the coach and Parker Lapaine as the ex – all do well with the limited range Hnath gives them. They’re all more about speed than subtlety, and any nuanced character development is kicked firmly to the curb. Matthew Dunster stages the conversations effectively, although the need to place the water-filled ditch far to one side of the Orange Tree’s in-the-round playing space creates sightline problems for a quarter of the audience.

It’s all fine, but it could be more than fine, and that’s disappointing. Finn Cole and Ciáran Owens are working so hard for what is ultimately fluff. They deserve more. But it’s still fun to watch.

Runs until August 10, 2024