It has been suggested that few characters in contemporary drama are as exposed as those of the US theatremaker Richard Maxwell.
In Maxwell's work - weird dislocated musicals, mostly set in contemporary suburban America - the characters speak without inflection or emotion. The lines are delivered in flat monotones, a feat that requires consummately good "bad" acting from the performers.
When it fails, which it does some of the time, it is just plain boring. When it works, which it does much of the time, something curious happens: the audience fills in the gaps between the lines, supplies its own emotional back story and map for the people on stage.
The results are brief snapshots of modern American life that are ruthlessly funny and desperately sad. They are entirely without the artifice of most theatre.
In Drummer Wanted, a musician breaks his leg in a motorcycle accident and moves back in with his middle-aged mother while waiting for his leg to heal and what he hopes will be a large insurance payout. On the surface the relationship seems no more difficult than that of any mother and her grown-up son, but as time passes it is apparent that there are huge fissures in their relations and an extended power play is taking place.
The entire hour is a seesaw of reliance and resentment. It is as if every time one or the other opens their mouth they are physically prodding each other. Every line is delivered without the slightest hint of emotion, but you know that eventually these two will tear each other apart. It is as if what is hidden has suddenly become glaringly apparent.
In the circumstances it is hard to comment on the acting except to say that it is as effectively monotonous as one would expect from a Maxwell production.
If you have never seen his work before, it is well worth catching. If you have seen a few Maxwell productions, you might feel that you've got the point, and that he is in danger of just repeating himself. There is, after all, a great deal of difference between a distinct voice, and one that always sounds the same.
· Until March 22. Box office: 020-7638 8891.
