Chimerica, Almeida Theatre - theatre review | London Evening Standard (original) (raw)

29.05 review CHIMERICA by Kirkwood, , Writer - Lucy Kirkwood, Director - Lyndsey Turner, Design - Es Devlin, Almeida Theatre, London, 2013, Credit: Johan Persson/Almeida Theatre

Johan Persson

The word Chimerica may not trip off the tongue, but Lucy Kirkwood’s new play is both fluent and seductive.

It’s a tremendously bold piece of writing, given brilliant life in a co-production between the Almeida and the consistently impressive company Headlong. As such, it feels like a promising sign of what’s to come at this Islington venue, where Headlong’s Rupert Goold replaces artistic director Michael Attenborough in September.

The title of the play is not just a word for imaginary or fanciful things, but also a portmanteau term that combines the names of the world’s largest manufacturer and its largest consumer.

Grappling with the symbiotic yet uncomfortable relationship between China and America, Kirkwood weaves several meaty strands into a three-hour epic that spans 24 years.

At its centre is a journalist — here called Joe Schofield — famed for his photo of a lone protester standing before the advancing tanks in Tiananmen Square. Piqued by a rumour that the protester didn’t die, Joe becomes fixated with tracking him down. It’s a quest that spins us from a smart Manhattan gallery to Beijing at its most gritty, and from a sleazy strip club to a US political gala.

Stephen Campbell Moore captures Joe’s complexities, in a performance of bruised authenticity. Benedict Wong is immense as his friend Zhang Lin, to whom he imparts both tenderness and real bite. And there’s assured work around them, notably from Claudie Blakley as Joe’s English love interest Tessa, Sean Gilder as his world-weary colleague Mel, and Andrew Leung in two contrasting roles.

Director Lyndsey Turner maintains a satisfying pace while also doing a lovely job of probing the writing’s intricacies. There are 40 scene changes, made absorbing by Es Devlin’s revolving cuboid design, complete with excellent projections by Finn Ross.

The production has a filmic quality and brings to mind the seamless ingenuity of Robert Lepage, though there’s also a dash of Goold’s particular bravura and a fierce intelligence that is very much Turner’s own.

Kirkwood mixes high seriousness and a mastery of complex issues with a fine ear for the comedy of humdrum situations. She manages to be topical without being gimmicky and well-informed without being showily so.

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While this is a landmark production for everyone involved, for this 29-year-old playwright it’s the culmination of six years’ work — and a triumph.