★★★★

“Samuel Edward-Cook’s performance is a tour-de-force”

Behind a metallic, gauze curtain a figure paces back and forth. Shaven headed. His shadow follows him across the vertical wall of the translucent screen – a projected alter ego pursuing its prey, fuelling the claustrophobic motions of the man’s repetitive circuit. His behaviour is erratic yet painfully routine. It’s like watching a captive animal through the bars of a zoo’s enclosure.

A flash of brilliant white light releases him to tell his story. It’s a story that dominated the front pages and caught the public imagination during the summer of 2010. That of the major police operation across Tyne and Wear – the manhunt for fugitive Raoul Moat. The ex-prisoner was on the run for nearly a week after a killing spree, ending with a six-hour standoff with armed police and Moat’s suicide. It was a story that landed in the lap of journalist Andrew Hankinson whose subsequent book inspired Robert Icke’s brutal and challenging one-act play. The overriding word on our lips is ‘why?’

“Manhunt” doesn’t offer any answers, but it poses the question from every angle, looking at the horrific events through the eyes of the victims and the perpetrator, often begging us to ask which is which. Icke’s writing and direction steer the narrative in a cyclical fashion, swinging between flashbacks and the present. It is often Kafkaesque in its approach as Moat fights a system he believes has been against him since birth. Whether we are supposed to be or not, we are drawn into Moat’s own tragedy as much as his victim’s which is unsettling to say the least. Samuel Edward-Cook’s performance is a tour-de-force that reinforces this with a warped honesty as he tries to justify himself. All the while he is surrounded by figures from his past and present: the judges and juries that accuse him of hitting his daughter; the ex-partner; his childhood self, locked in his room by his unstable mother; the father he never knew; social workers; friends, accomplices and detractors, and most importantly his victims. A poignant extended blackout heightens a first-hand account from a police officer he randomly shot and blinded in a cold-hearted act of revenge.

The supporting cast who play the multiple roles are as equally compelling as Edward-Cook, if not as frightening. This could well have been a one man show along the lines of the recent ‘Kenrex’, which follows similar themes, but the ensemble here fleshes out the account and adds a distinct and welcome light and shade. There is occasional confusion during moments when we are unsure that what we are witnessing is in Moat’s mind or in reality. Hallucinations overlap real life too often, yet it all adds to the unease, and we are constantly left unsure who to believe. So rather than collude with anybody we end up trusting no one. An unsatisfactory and dangerous position to be in, but one that maybe Icke is trying to spotlight.

Danger is an undercurrent that bursts to the surface constantly. Edward-Cook’s manic, wild-eyed stare cements this. He is a drowning man watching his life flash before him. Azusa Ono’s lighting evokes the episodes with haunting atmosphere, from the coldness of a prison cell to the campfire warmth of his last hiding place in the Northumbrian countryside. Here Moat talks to fellow Geordie, Paul Gascoigne before confronting his estranged father and being consoled by a doting grandmother. It is all unreal, but it helps him unearth the truth of his nature. There is only one conclusion. Justice takes a back seat while cause and effect – action and reaction – take centre stage.

At the time, Moat was famously labelled a ‘callous murderer… end of story’. Which is arguably the case. This play appears to challenge that assumption, but Icke’s writing is as ambiguous as the history as he tries to dig deeper. But there is no avoiding the fact that Moat was a big, strong man who used violence against those who were weaker than him. He lied, he lacked control, and he tried to justify his actions that ruined and ended lives. It is not a good story. However, Icke turns it into a breath-taking piece of theatre. We might wonder why he chose to do so, but we are enthralled and disturbed by the experience, and the performances will stick in our minds for quite a while. A gripping production. End of story.

EAST IS SOUTH

Hampstead Theatre

★★★

“The cast is superb and slips through the gears with unruffled confidence”

In his break-out hit House of Cards, writer Beau Willimon peered into the darker culverts of the human soul to assemble Kevin Spacey’s sinister politician Frank Underwood. In the dazzlingly complex East Is South, he stays in the same vicinity but stares fixedly upwards.

He is doing nothing less than searching for God, or her composite parts.

His new play asks whether Agi – the anthropomorphised AI machine – has the necessary attributes to claim the role.

These dense philosophical disquisitions are, mercifully, pinned to a conventional genre plot. Someone has sidestepped protocols and attempted to release Agi into the outside world.

The stage is a soulless interrogation suite in a secret facility. Coders Lena (Kaya Scodelario) and Sasha (Luke Treadaway) are quizzed by diligent NSA agent Samira (Nathalie Armin). Loitering in the shadows is mentor and walking Ted talk Ari Abrams (Cliff Curtis), who is battling his own demons, except he doesn’t believe in such things.

On a two-tier stage, the office above is set aside for the watchers, the agents and the monitors.

Despite Lena’s plaintive denials, there are reasons to suspect her motives. She comes from a strict Mennonite Christian upbringing and her vetting throws up some dubious episodes in her past. Then there’s her relationship with Sasha, a Russian refugee who literally bears the scars of a repressive regime.

Why would they risk everything – freedom, life, intellectual exploration – on a fool’s errand? Another question might be, why deny Agi her manifest destiny?

Under Ellen McDougall’s unobtrusive direction, the interrogation scenes ground a script which, like a toppled firework, has an instinct to shoot off in brilliant tangents. The cross-examinations are tense, revelatory – and comprehensible.

Elsewhere, it feels like an explosion in an encyclopedia factory, with characters picking up random pages and reading aloud. We have an explanation of the Māori Haka, a disquisition on the duality of mind and body, a theory of dark matter, an update on efficient evolution, some rousing Bach deconstruction, an unfortunate incident with a snack bowl and a torrent of other fragmentary pieces that attempt to cohere into a grasp of ineffability, which by nature and definition proves impossible.

Meanwhile agent Olsen (Alec Newman), an amusingly simple soul among a collection of racked consciences, only wants to break fingers and find the truth. While others have multiple descriptors (Māori Jew, Sufi Muslim) he’s just an American, he says, and tired of all the high-falutin’ speechifying.

The cast is superb and slips through the gears with unruffled confidence. Scodelario is nicely unreadable as the idealistic coder, neatly balancing a clear intellectual rigour with a soft and damaged heart. Treadaway is sinuous and sly. Armin gives the thankless role of interrogator depth, while professorial Curtis steals scenes with his nuanced Eeyore ramblings.

They all wear their brilliance lightly. This is just as well, because the heavy-handed approach to the topic threatens to snuff out the guttering candle that is leading us mere mortals through this mazy nether world.

In the end, the posturing longueurs edge out the needs of genre drama such that relationships are rushed and the plot twists are never entirely convincing.

Nevertheless, this is an ambitious and fearless attempt to explore the nature of AI which threatens to revive discussions of the divine just as we in the West have settled for secularity.

What emerges is the irrational need for transcendence and ritual that make us both human and – in Agi’s eyes – unfit for purpose.

MANHUNT

Royal Court

★★★★

“Samuel Edward-Cook’s performance is a tour-de-force”

MANHUNT

Royal Court

Reviewed on 8th April 2025

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Manuel Harlan

Previously reviewed at this venue:

MANHUNT

MANHUNT

MANHUNT

EAST IS SOUTH

Hampstead Theatre

★★★

“The cast is superb and slips through the gears with unruffled confidence”

EAST IS SOUTH

Hampstead Theatre

Reviewed on 17th February 2025

by Giles Broadbent

Photography by Manuel Harlan

Previously reviewed at this venue:

EAST IS SOUTH

EAST IS SOUTH

EAST IS SOUTH