Dealing With Clair, Orange Tree

A real man-hating play, that suggests that men range from calculating serial killer to predatory perve, and if you get the latter, you're lucky. To be fair, Crimp gets a lot of mileage out of his nasty thesis, and the performances in this are superb across the board.

Spoilers follow. . .

Fans of serial killer dramas will love this the most, as Michael Gould is chilling as James, the character based on "Mr. Kipper," the nom-de-plume of the murderer who killed estate agent Suzy Lamplugh, upon whose case this play is based. Crimp gives James a pernickety picky way with words, that suggests he is always digging, and Gould makes the character just a bit too everything, so that he gave me the complete creeps. He is just a bit too inquisitive, just a bit too smiley, just a bit to starey, just a bit too close, just a bit too precise, just a bit too piercing, just a bit too pleased with himself. He is someone you'd want to run a mile from, but wouldn't be able to fairly give a single reason why. It's one of the single creepiest stage portrayals I've seen, and he never specifically says or does anything wrong you can put your finger on. Remarkable.

On the other hand, ordinary guy and cheery house seller, Tom Mothersdale's Mike is more careless than Gould's James. While he is also just a bit too everything, he crosses the perve line repeatedly and obviously with in-house au-pair, Anna, and with Lizzy Watt's sweet charming titular Clair, the Suzy Lamplugh of this play. Crimp unsubtly casts the property market as a predatory capitalist free-for-all in which men have a free hand to let their perve out, and women overlook the perviness out of sheer complicit greed.

Mothersdale is terrifyingly convincing as a man who sees a perving opportunity in every transaction, within or without the family. He displays an eagerness to help that allows him to invade people's spaces, and successfully recasts behaviour that would generally seem generous and helpful, as just another day of play for his big bad wolf, a character he also recently played more literally at the Royal Court Upstairs.

With Gould and Mothersdale on top frightening form, it is fortunate that the female cast are equally strong. As Mothersdale's wife, Hara Yannas pinpoints the exact spot where disdain for her husband becomes complicity in his actions, and as Mothersdale's au-pair, Roseanna Frascona carries the world-weary bearing of a woman who is so inured to the intrinsic filthiness of men, that she just doesn't give a damn any more.

But it is Lizzy Watts as Suzy Lamplugh avatar, Clair, that brings this production to real life. She isn't a horrible caricature of a human being. From her first vulnerable appearance, alone in the world, on the phone to her mum, Watts makes Clair a loveable lost soul, someone with smiles to conceal her frowns, cheeriness to mask her ambitions, and the genuine compassion and curiosity that mark her as a victim in the predatory world into which she will step.

As long as Watts is in the show, it is remarkable because her humanity balances the predators. Once she leaves it, it becomes unbalanced and cold, a transparent shark tank with nothing left to consume, and nothing more to say.

For three quarters, this is excellent, for the last quarter weak, but what is most frightening about this show is how convincingly Crimp and Gould and Mothersdale make the slanderous case that men are irredeemable, and that women should always be fearful of the shadows.

4 stars.