Lives up to its name – and how!
Just back from ‘Brian & Roger – A highly offensive play’ at the Menier’s second stage – The Mixing Room.
This is a new venue, with about two thirds the capacity of the Chocolate Factory, and seems once to have been a strange-shaped sports hall.
Derived from a series of podcasts, Roger (played by co-author Dan Skinner) is a Holy Innocent (or Fool) – forever beguiled by Roger (played by Simon Lipkin– a last minute replacement for co-author Harry Peacock) – a Mephistophelian chancer, liar and all round-bad hat; engaging him in a crescendo of bad decisions and worse outcomes.
All Roger wants is to get back with his estranged wife and son, all Brian wants is for Roger to do all his dirty work in advancing his (Brian’s) ends, without regard to Rogers’s many pains and close encounters with death. One is supremely naïve and forever forgiving, the other is a supremely selfish and self-centred psychopath.
Conducted (mainly) as a set of voice messages left for each other and (mainly) very funny, there are some genuinely horrifying moments. Banging together a set of podcasts makes the play too long, and requires some suspension of belief which undermines the ‘reality’ of the comedy; it is not surprising that it has got mixed (alpha/ gamma) reviews. But I came out not regretting my time (and learning some things about hard drug culture I hadn’t known!).
The set is hugely enhanced by technically clever back projection which means that the set (still very much a sports hall) happily doubles as a wide variety of venues. The review in the link is one of the few Beta takes.