Warde Street

Watching ‘Warde Street’ is a frustrating experience. It’s a play of jarringly different halves, full of interesting and provocative ideas that don’t have proper time to breathe in Damien Tracey’s awkwardly structured script.

The first half has a really fascinating premise. David, an ambitious British politician, is trying to re-start a career derailed by an affair with Samiya, his aide. But her devoutly Muslim brother-in-law has just been accused of shooting dead the man – a relative of a 7/7 victim – who killed his wife.

It’s rich territory to explore in today’s climate of media-fanned Islamophobia. Does David sacrifice his career to support Samiya and Ashfaq, her brother-in-law? Tracey raises some hard questions about the role played by fear and misunderstanding in the choices made by public figures.

But this all gets bogged down in unrealistic exchanges between characters who are bent out of shape in service of the plot. Tracey deserves kudos for stepping up to play David following the original actor’s departure. But he hasn’t given himself an easy job with his own dialogue.

And then… all of this set-up just falls away in the second half, in favour of a rewind to the night of the shooting in Ashfaq’s shop. Director Jenny Eastop skilfully heightens the tension in these scenes and there’s some great work from the cast – particularly Shane Noone as Eddie, whose grief at losing his partner in the London bombings has curdled into a desperate (and fatal) desire to punish someone.

But, beneath the yelling, we don’t learn anything that we haven’t already pieced together, and off-key characterisation is still an affliction. Most annoyingly, the ideas set in motion in the first half never to get a pay-off. The play’s many promising fragments never form a satisfying whole.