“Maybe this is as good as it gets,” says Grace (Rosie Sheehy) wistfully, nearing the end of her university house-share with boyfriend Marcus (Charles Reston) and the more free-spirited Aaron (Trieve Blackwood-Cambridge), who might be her real soulmate. And so it proves because when, a few years later, this unlikely trio are reunited in the old student house, the world has changed beyond all recognition.
The ambitious Marcus is working for the government in some shadowy capacity, dissidents such as Aaron are being hunted down, and Grace only wants to keep herself safe, whatever the cost. Who can blame her? It must be hard living with a dramatic metaphor bubbling up ominously in the cellar.
Earlier this year, Titas Halder directed Sinners Club in style at Cardiff’s The Other Room and his one-man play Run the Beast Down premiered at the Finborough in London. But his story of love, betrayal, sacrifice and self-interest seldom hits the mark in a production that never persuades you to believe in its near-future dystopia or warm to the characters, and which bungles all the physical stuff, from the comic to the horrifically violent.
Halder’s script plays skilfully with different timeframes but lacks the tautness of a thriller, and the details of how this world turned into an authoritarian state are so fuzzy that you start suspecting that the playwright knows no more than we do.
• At Theatre 503, London, until 15 April. Box office: 020-7978 7040. At The Other Room, Cardiff, 19 April - 6 May. Box office: 0333-666 3366.
