By Christopher Shinn
Directed by Josh Seymour
Designed by Jasmine Swan
Lighting Design by Jess Bernberg
Minerva Theatre, Chichester Festival Theatre
Thursday 15th September 2022, 14.45
CAST
Harry Lloyd- Jim
Clair Skinner – Senator
Caroline Gruber – Mom
Akshay Khanna – Aide
Simon Lennon – Andrew
Stuart Thompson – waiter
Paksie Vernon – Kara
Jenny Walser – Cecily
We were down to see this in 2020. Christopher Shinn is an American writer, and the play should have played just before the US 2020 Presidential Election.
Spot the difference. We kept our block of 2020 tickets (left) – we had booked every play in Chichester’s season, as we have this year. We’ve grown to trust Chichester on quality. Both lots full-price, but this year seats are a bit further forward and a £2 price rise … I’m not complaining. An equivalent London production would be at least twice the price in a far less comfortable theatre. I flicked through. Some plays they stuck with and re-did in 2022, others they abandoned. Because of its topicality in Fall 2020, I’m really surprised this one beat the cull.
Shinn has done some revisions in the light of the US 2020 Election (I couldn’t spot what they might have been), but it’s still set in Fall 2017.
Jim (Harry Lloyd) is an ex-advisor or rather spin doctor, to ‘the candidate’ (i.e. Hilary Clinton) in the 2016 Election campaign, and the only person on her staff to tell the ‘candidate’ she was going to lose. He is now being cajoled to work for an ambitious Senator for her campaign. His life is complex. He’s bisexual. His wife, Emma has gone away to Italy as a prelude to divorce. He’s engaged in writing up the story of the 2016 campaign with Cara (Paksie Vernon), his best friend from college. They slept together (twice) fifteen years earlier (both being bisexual). Now Cara is in a relationship with a ten years younger woman. Cara relies on their joint project for an income … her novels are no longer a living for her.
Jim’s mom has the problem of her other son, drug addicted Drew / Andrew (Simon Lennon) in a poisonous co-dependent relationship with Cecily (Jenny Walser). She wants Jim to give Cecily her marching orders.
The Senator (Claire Skinner) wants Jim to work for her campaign to be a presidential hopeful.
Jim is attracted to the young waiter (Stuart Thompson) at The Senator’s penthouse, who is gay. A notable thing about the play is that two of the major characters … The Senator and The Waiter have no names. Nor does The Aide to The Senator (Akshay Khanna), nor does Mom (Caroline Gruber).
In the play the characters text. Their texts are italicized. We hear the texts spoken by the characters texting. How this is staged is up to the director, but texts should not be projected – they should be spoken as dialogue
When Jim receives a text, we hear it spoken as he reads it on the phone – not when itis being composed by the sender
Christopher Shinn, The Narcissist play script, 2022
I can’t believe Christopher Shinn’s intent will ever get better staged than in this production. Jasmine Swan’s set reproduces a digital world, with characters in boxes, arranged almost like icons for Apps on a SmartPhone. The conceit is that the communication with background characters is is text messages, but they don’t appear to text, the lights go on around their box and they speak. When Jim replies he just speaks. In the play script, the texts are in italic. Later, with urgent events, characters run on to the main playing area, but are delineated and boxed by the linear lights, so are still texting. Then there are rapid changes of scene using a revolve stage and a one wall background with two doors. I noted that though many chairs, desks and sofas appear, they’re all different and appropriate in style to the location. The fluid stage design for the play is the best thing of all.
The play text is presented as three acts, but performed here with one interval after Acts 1 & 2. It’s not long, I’d say 1 hour 55 minutes overall plus a twenty minute interval. Two intervals would have been wrong. The split was right here.
It starts out very well. The set design and the interjections by text from above are innovative. The lighting design (and execution) is state of the art. I was perturbed by The Waiter’s over-rapid, quiet and gabbled first major speech though (it’s supposed to show nervous energy as he tries to hit on Jim), and voice projection was not an initial virtue of The Senator either. But I was impressed overall.
Christopher Shinn seems unhappy with more than two people on centre stage at once, but Jim / The Senator and Jim / Drew in hospital both worked. Some reviews complain that The Senator is a cipher, but I found her a thoroughly believable professional politician.
Then, when Jim invites The Waiter to his apartment, we switch from all that rapid texting innovative motif to a lengthy (Act 2 in the script) angst-ridden dialogue on desire v love, bi-sexuality and homosexuality. It’s like we’ve stepped into a different play. Did I say it was long? Ah, yes. Lengthy. It seems so after the rapid interjections in the preceding scenes. They’ve agreed to switch off phones, so the lighted borders disappear.It’s two blokes on a sofa with drinks speaking at great length. It has its moments. After that innovative start, we’re into American Drama 101 – stick with two speakers, who exchange long monologues about their inner feelings.
It’s not going to stop because after the interval we get a lengthy Kara / Jim angst-ridden dialogue, and then a lengthy Senator / Jim angst ridden dialogue. I mutter that this is what I so dislike about so many modern American playwrights. My rule is SHOW it don’t explain it.
There was an odd comment from Broadway World site:
A two-hander might have been less commercial, narrower in scope, but a stronger play – Director, Josh Seymour, keeps the personal and the political intertwined – it’s just that the former is as bland as white bread toasted with margarine and the latter as spicy as a Birmingham Balti. Putting both on the same plate doesn’t really work.
Gary Naylor, Broadway World
I couldn’t agree less. A two-hander? But which two? As you can see from the photos, it’s all twos. While the front story is Jim and The Senator, Jim and the gay waiter, and Jim and Kara are equally strong story elements. Jim and brother Drew’s hospital scene is short, but very good, because Simon Lennon plays Drew so well.
The Senator story gets the attention, but I found comments on writing in the Jim / Kara interaction personally more interesting. I liked Kara’s irritation that her partner had declined to read any of her novels, and when she started reading one finally, could only comment on how far she’s got. All writers know the feeling. Your loved ones are not your target audience. Though the scenes with Cecily are also short, she is a powerful presence.
When Jim rails about the stupidity of the great American public (and how to utilise it), my mind jumps to Nathanael West in ‘The Day of The Locust’ saying much the same thing so much more eloquently circa 1939.
It’s a difficult play to judge. The set designer and lighting designer are certainly five star, as is the direction. Harry Lloyd and Claire Skinner are both excellent and lead an accomplished cast. In particular, Harry Lloyd is never off stage for the entire play and handles the levels of emotion required superbly. Stuart Thompson as the Waiter is really good, but like so many actors of his generation needs to work on pitching for clarity, and even though it’s a matinee, please, please, do not gabble. He gabbles much less later on.
Trouble is, I don’t like the play much. I don’t think what it has to say on political manipulation, relationships or addiction compares remotely with TV series like BBC’s The Capture (political manipulation) or Disney TV’s Dopesick (addiction). It’s that groaning American “serious” style of actors emoting at length to each other. It lacks humour. It lacks irony, It lacks theatricality in itself, though the director has added it with the set concept. It’s also lost the topical impact it would have had before the last US Election, and is weak on the target of the narcissist of all time, Donald Trump. Neither Trump nor Clinton are mentioned by name. That’s a cop-out. Jim, the central character, is the one accused of narcissism, but as the play progresses, each of the characters earn the title.
So 5 star design, direction, production, and in most parts, acting, of a lesser 2 star script. All in all, the critical consensus of three stars is right. If I weren’t so into stage design and lighting, it would be less.(Karen is a 2 star rating). It’s particularly hard as Chichester has rung up so may 5 star productions this season, that its faults ring out.
***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
HARRY LLOYD
The Duchess of Malfi, Old Vic, 2012 (Ferdinand)
The Theory of Everything (film)
PAKSIE VERNON
The Watsons, Chichester Minerva, 2018
CAROLINE GRUBER
Leopoldstadt, Tom Stoppard, West End, 2019
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
four star
Mark Lawson, The Guardian – ****
Susannah Clapp, The Observer – ****
three star
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph ***
Clive Davis – The Times ***
Patrick Marmion, Daily Mail, ***
Sarah Hemming, Financial Times, ***
Tom Wicker- The Stage, ***
Gary Naylor, Broadway World ***
two star
Gareth Carr, What’s On Stage **
Peter Viney's Blog 
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