The week in theatre: Beat the Devil; Sleepless: A Musical Romance – review

Susannah Clapp
·3-min read

Going into the shell-shaped auditorium at the Bridge you see at a glance how Covid has scythed through the theatre. In the stalls, seats have been removed, not merely taped up: the audience sit in isolated pairs; we might be in dodgem cars, tensed to avoid the virus.

Or as David Hare, who was laid low by coronavirus in March, puts it, we are trying to Beat the Devil. In an impassioned 50 minutes – part polemic, part pathological investigation – he proves that his strongest writing for the stage is now fiery documentary. Ralph Fiennes, who delivers Hare’s monologue, directed by Nicholas Hytner, shows that one of his strengths is a sardonic lightness and restraint; the ripples of unease spread by George Fenton’s music echo this. Fiennes moves across Bunny Christie’s calm design (translucent screens, a work table) freely but with caution, as might a convalescent. His voice is most often level. It is the words that are explosive.

The attacks on Boris Johnson’s government – too late locking down, slow to supply PPE, shuffling people from hospital to care homes – are not revelations: they are the truth. The itemisation of the disease’s symptoms and progress is startling. It was so efficient in its suddenness: it captured him overnight. It was so versatile: not only vomiting but conjunctivitis, not merely coughing but diarrhoea; its masterstroke was to make everything taste of sewage.

Hare’s account is practical and graphic – his Covid skin colour is that of Bela Lugosi’s Dracula – but he also sees an allegorical aspect in the effects of a plague that is “almost medieval”. Its continual shape-shifting mirrors the slippery changeableness of government policy. Hare’s friend, the playwright Howard Brenton, who has also had Covid, told him that the virus “departs like a demon”. So here’s hoping…

It is bold of Wembley’s Troubadour, where audience capacity has been cut from 1,300 to 400, to have forged ahead with Sleepless: A Musical Romance, its adaptation of Sleepless in Seattle (Meg Ryan, small boy, Empire State Building, fluffy toy, sob). Morgan Young’s production is an efficient vehicle for Jay McGuinness, of boyband the Wanted, and Kimberley Walsh of Girls Aloud – both assured – and has a nimble, non-soppy appearance by Jobe Hart as the winsome son. It glides smoothly along on Morgan Large’s grey, rain-washed design, neatly referencing the lovelorn hero’s profession with architect’s sketches.

Yet the flimsiness of characterisation in the movie is exposed when stripped of its extraordinary soundtrack and replaced by Robert Scott’s light score, often sounding like music that is hurrying along a scene change. The humour would have to be much stronger than here to survive a socially distanced audience. If only something bold had been done. Like turning the whole thing on its head and making the stars the rejected suitors: the man with a sneezing allergy and the woman who laughs like a hyena. Meanwhile, Sleepless is agile enough to keep you awake but not fresh enough to send you away with new dreams.