An Interrogation at Hampstead Theatre review: Rosie Sheehy is utterly compelling

A young female detective and a murder suspect play cat and mouse during an interview in this tersely effective debut play from director Jamie Armitage. It’s a neat, contained scenario for the kind of gendered, generational power struggle, triggered by a slaughtered woman, that’s familiar from countless TV police thrillers.

But the live broadcast onto the set’s drab walls of footage of the interrogation – from above, then cutting between single shots of both protagonists and close-ups of their fidgeting hands under the table – ratchets up the tension. And it helps immensely that the detective, Ruth, is played by Welsh actress Rosie Sheehy, one of the most quietly compelling stage performers working today.

We’re in Berkshire, where a young woman has been missing for 68 hours. She lived relatively close to Cameron Andrews (Jamie Ballard), a smooth and comfortable man who looks after his ageing mum, runs a charity, and has a firm advising businesses and “the Exchequer”. One of his female employees also previously disappeared and was later found strangled with a rope.

Though there’s no hard evidence, Ruth is convinced he’s tied to both women. Her bluntly paternal superior officer John (Colm Gormley) is sceptical but in the accepted tradition of boss-to-protégé patronage, he gives her one shot. When Cameron submits to a voluntary interview John leaves Ruth alone with him and gives her tactical tips: play the rookie card; remove your engagement ring; give ground but don’t give away anything personal. But Cameron also asks questions.

So far, so much like The Silence of the Lambs. But the dynamics of the conversation are made more interesting by our uncertainty over Cameron’s guilt or innocence, and his plausible assertion that Ruth is just angry at rich, powerful, middle-aged white men: she wants him to be guilty. Nice touches in the dialogue – he switches between her first name and her rank and surname as a power-play – are undercut by a couple of honkingly loaded lines.

It's still very tense. Sheehy is terrific at projecting pugnacity and vulnerability. She and Ballard both give nuanced, understated performances, yet every purse of the lips or flicker of the eyes is projected in close up behind them. The play isn’t just about power, it’s about the cost of playing a role. Armitage is best known as the co-director of SIX: the Musical, which couldn’t be more formally or tonally different to An Interrogation. But it is also at heart a performance about performance.

There are a couple of cheap but electrifying narrative twists towards the end of the play and it stutters towards a denouement: things Armitage the director might have finessed if he hadn’t also written it.

But this is a creditably taut debut work from him and another notch on Rosie Sheehy’s impressive CV, which already includes work for the RSC and National Theatre, David Mamet’s Oleanna, and a stunning turn in Machinal at the Old Vic last year. She’s from Port Talbot, like Richard Burton, Anthony Hopkins and Michael Sheen. There’s definitely something in the water there.

Hampstead Theatre Downstairs, to Feb 22; hampsteadtheatre.com