Martin Mirkheim is a dope. But this small-time loser has big-time dreams. When we first meet Martin he is spouting new age spiritual claptrap to a Florida tax evasion officer who is about to screw him for unpaid back taxes.
His wife wants out. He wants to make a movie out of a trashy book written by a self-help guru but he hasn't a dime. Quite frankly, Martin seems like a bit of a likable nutter.
When we last catch up with Martin, after two murders and a journey that crisscrosses the US like an unending road movie, he is in control. He has a successful career making slasher movies. It is rather like witnessing your goofy pet goldfish suddenly leap out of the bowl and turn into a piranha. You can hardly believe what you've seen.
Howard Korder's modern morality tale is a satiric cross between Everyman, Faust and Pilgrim's Progress. Mirkheim learns his lessons well. He rises above the charlatan gurus, the coke sniffers and dealers, the botched drug deal and those with sharper suits and sharper brains - to become the biggest fish in the pool. The loser turns winner: Martin is the personification of the American dream turned nightmare.
Search and Destroy was written in 1990 and first seen in this country at the Royal Court in 1993. It was an extraordinarily prescient play about the social, political, business and spiritual values of the US in the 1990s. The culture that Korder explores has come to pass. But because it turned out to be true, Korder's play now also suffers from being over-familiar.
What saves Korder's play is the cleverness of the vignettes of the people Martin meets on his odyssey - the quiet receptionist with a horror movie in her back pocket; the violent drug dealer who must rush to pick up his daughter from school - and the sheer bravado of the writing.
He writes sentences that, when delivered by class actors (as they are here), make the audience feel that they are looking down the barrel of a sawn-off shotgun. Like Martin himself, every word of the script is keyed-up, edgy, coiled and frightening. The scenes even begin and end abruptly, like real life.
Director Simon Cox keeps things simple and the acting is as subtle and sharp as a paper cut. Even if you've seen, or think you've seen, this kind of sour American morality tale before, it's worth seeing again.
Until February 11. Box office: 020-7794 0022.
