Drugs, unemployment and a heavy air of purposelessness gnaw at the trio in Samuel D Hunter’s bleak 2015 play, which considers what it means to live, work and travel in the US, a country where it seems nothing is new and it’s a struggle to survive. Despite the show’s overly expository dialogue, Clarkston gradually gives way to an intimate story about trying to make the best of the hand you’ve been dealt.
Heartstopper’s Joe Locke plays Jake, who wants his life to matter. A forcefully chipper and naive liberal arts graduate, he’s dreamed of heading west to follow the footsteps of his very distant relative, the pioneer William Clark, whose imperialist history is acknowledged if not fully wrestled with. But grounded by his Huntington’s disease, Jake has only made it as far as the nondescript city the explorer is named for. Taking night shifts at Costco, he clatters into the life of Chris (Ruaridh Mollica), whose tough, largely closeted exterior hides immense vulnerability.
Mollica effortlessly breathes life into this hard-shelled character who doesn’t know how to talk to a man romantically and has never seen the ocean other than in photographs. Emerging from the night shift, his days are shadowed by his troubled mum, Trisha (played with immaculate control by Sophie Melville), an addict who manipulatively wrings discomfort from Jake’s misplaced efforts to help.
The script is often heavy-handed, with a backstory handed to us on a plate and little left unsaid. The staging presents limitations with necessarily perfunctory direction in the warehouse scenes, as cart-loads of cardboard boxes and cheese balls are stacked on Milla Clarke’s set. Strangely, some of the audience sit on stage with the actors, their presence adding little but trip hazards.
Loneliness pervades Jack Serio’s production as each character loses what they’ve been working so hard to hold on to. But there are glimmers of hope in their nudged jokes, second attempts and the way they sit with each other at their worst moments, unsure what to say but knowing there is purpose in being there, to see what no one else has been allowed to see before.
• At Trafalgar theatre, London, until 22 November
