[title]
‘Dessert’, by veteran actor and occasional writer Oliver Cotton, is a pretty weird play, kind of a hostage thriller-meets-drawing room comedy, with a self-consciously post-Occupy sense of fiscal morality.
It’s directed by Trevor ‘Sir Trev’ Nunn, erstwhile RSC and NT head honcho: he may not be anybody’s idea of cutting edge, but he’s a big-name signing for a fringe show. There is, however, the nagging sense that ‘Dessert’ only got staged because he agreed to do it, and if he hadn’t it might possibly have been better for everyone.
The title is the most understated thing about it. Set at a dinner party that obscenely wealthy British businessman Hugh (Michael Simkins) and his wife Gill (Alexandra Gilbreath) are hosting for their obscenely rich American pals Wesley (Stuart Milligan) and Meredith (Teresa Banham), the name is both a dry reference to the fact that the ensuing events happen in lieu of pudding, and also that they are, perhaps, just desserts for Hugh’s rampantly free-market economic ways.
Essentially, and in a completely absurd twist, the house is stormed by Eddie (Stephen Hagan), a disgruntled ex-soldier – and apparently a military genius – who holds a grudge against Hugh for filleting the company that his father had invested his life savings into. What does he want? It takes almost two hours before he’ll say, at which point it becomes apparent that there was literally no need for Eddie to launch this massively expensive and complicated raid on the building, as he could have easily delivered his demands over the phone.
Still, the point is to get the hyper-articulate anti-hero into an argument with the others over the nature of wealth, and Cotton lands some decent enough lines about the morality of money and the value of art. But it’s hard to really get over how utterly contrived the means of setting up that debate are, while attempts to empathise with a younger generation are undermined by some defiantly un-PC undercurrents.
Cotton’s script creaks, and so does Nunn’s relentlessly stolid, remorselessly naturalistic direction – I wonder if it’s a show that would work better as a frenzied, Orton-esque farce (certainly a big post-interval gag suggests it’s meant to be much funnier than the director has allowed).
Nunn has assembled a very good cast: Simkins is particularly excellent as the ferociously self-justifying Hugh. But the pedigree of everybody involved only serves to remind of the better work they’ve all done.