Mass
I was both moved by and a little annoyed at Mass. This story of two sets of bereaved parents attempting rapprochement in the aftermath of a high school shooting is the debut play by US actor and filmmaker Fran Kranz. He scored a low-key indie cinema success with the screen version of Mass, a 2021 film you’d be excused for not having heard of as it’s one of those flicks that got released to literally four cinemas.
Transposed to the stage, it retains an awkward filmic structure, bookended by extraneous scenes in which two staff members at the church hall in which it’s set fret over getting the space ready for the meeting. Rochelle Rose’s Kendra – the facilitator of the meet – swoops in with a very icy American efficiency that teeters on the pass agg. But it’s all irrelevant to the plot, and it feels like either more should have been made of these characters or much less.Â
The meat is the meeting. Four great Brit actors play the parents, and I suppose it’s a very small spoiler to say that at first we’re not entirely sure who is mum and dad to the victim, and who the shooter. Is it Adeel Akhtar’s forcedly cheerful Jay and brittler wife Gail (Lyndsey Marshal)? Or is it the more visibly broken down and subdued Linda (Monica Dolan) and Richard (Paul Hilton), whose marriage is implied to have broken down?Â
It’s not a mystery that Carre Cracknell’s naturalistic production attempts to drag out for a great length of time, but the five or 10 minutes of ambiguity underscore the...
