Apparently written as an ‘antidote’ to a saccharine screenplay that she was working on, Lucinda Coxon’s bleak comedy, ‘Herding Cats’, is most definitely not for the faint-hearted.
Initially, directionless twentysomething flatmates Justine (Olivia Hallinan) and Michael (Philip McGinley) seem to be the stuff of romcom formula: she is a motormouthed badass with a heart of gold; he is a reclusive oddball who makes his money working a sex line.
But rather than milk the scenario for obvious laughs, Coxon twists the knife violently. By the end, the once luminous Justine is a sobbing husk, having humbled herself for a couple of kind words from a married man. And Michael is busy role-playing the daughter of a fiftysomething male client with whom he is locked into a mutually dependent phone relationship.
Coxon’s suggestion that your basic city-bound, degree-educated wage slave will grasp at nearly anything for the sake of a reciprocal human connection is pretty grim. But aided by the brittle Hallinan and understated McGinley – both excellent – Anthony Banks’s production gets the point across with a horrid plausibility.
If there was any hope, I didn’t spot it, but the polished black shards of humour and ripples of queasy horror make for a compelling cackle into the void.