Certain performances are destined for a long run, though few are likely to run quite this far. At the heart of this Pilot Theatre production, Elliot Barnes-Worrell not only puts in an aggressively charismatic performance as Alan Sillitoe's antisocial athlete, he spends much of the evening pounding away on a treadmill. A conservative estimate is that he covers around 4km per show.
It's a great theatrical coup (has anyone seen an actor really sweat like this on stage before?); it also maintains the integrity of Sillitoe's original story, presented as an adrenaline rush of abstract thoughts pumping through the mind of the runner throughout the course of a race.
It could quite easily become shapeless, though Roy Williams's masterful adaptation keeps the action in a contemporary frame of reference. Colin, the runner, has been committed to a young offender's institution for looting a branch of Greggs in the 2011 London riots. This is faithful to the original (Sillitoe's hero is convicted of stealing a cash-box from a bakery), and sums up the mindlessness of that looting spree. "Man, I'd understand if it were Currys Digital or Carphone Warehouse," a fellow offender exclaims, "but Greggs?"
Dominic Gately turns in a fine performance as an idealistic prison psychologist who has no hair left to lose, having torn it out in the service of obstreperous adolescents. Marcus Romer's production flashes up telling video-bites of David Cameron promising zero tolerance when it comes to young offenders. Williams's version is as valid a portrait of a disaffected generation as Sillitoe's was 50 years ago: a lesson in how stakeholder society devolved into steak bake-holding society.
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