‘In an ideal world I’d see you eliminated. In this world I need you more than anyone.’ Such is the premise of David Gow’s award-winning two-hander in which Mike Downey, a young Canadian skinhead on trial for racially motivated murder, finds himself defended by Danny Dunkelman, a liberal, middle-class Jew.
This will seem overly familiar to anyone who’s watched a legal drama on primetime TV: needless to say assumptions are challenged on both sides, midnight oil is burned, a future is saved at the eleventh hour and the over-involved lawyer pays for the high-profile case with his marriage. You’re also unlikely to find your own assumptions challenged by the play’s message, addressed to us directly in the final scene, that a society which has failed to properly interrogate race hatred must bear its share of the blame.
But there’s still plenty of interest here, from the performances of Eric Loren and David Lyons, who flicker with pride, humour, revulsion and compassion under the harsh prison light, to the fierce physical imagery which peppers Gow’s language, beginning with Downey’s eulogy to his cherry-coloured Dr Martens – both his uniform and his weapon.
The most memorable scene, though, comes with a sudden wrench away from reality: ‘Where are we?’ asks Downey, distressed and disorientated after reading the testimony of the man he kicked to death. ‘The eye of the needle,’ Dunkelman replies.
