Nick Gill expresses his fury at hypocrisy but it's swallowed slightly in this comic, poetic take on middle-class England.
If Eugene Ionesco had sat down and written a grand piss-take of everything produced at the Royal Court in the last five years, it might have started a lot like Nick Gill’s Mirror Teeth.
Through a Bald Prima Donna-esque sequence of entertainingly expository events, we're introduced to the Jones family and their comfortingly banal existence in ‘our country’. It is, as they say, ‘a good life’ – or is it? Elder child John’s girlfriend Jean bears an unsettling resemblance to his sister Jenny – and Jenny’s new boyfriend Kwesi might be about to bring out the worst in both parents...
Gill doesn’t so much delight as revel joyously in picking at the suppurating prejudices at the heart of middle-class England. Patriarch and arms dealer James (David Verrey) is a splendidly pompous bully, dominating his edgy, insular wife Jane (Catherine Skinner). John and Jenny, meanwhile, are sub-consciously striving to get away, although their own warped outlook is steering this towards a burgeoning, incestuous car crash.
There are genuine points of beauty – impassioned, dreamlike monologues from John (Jamie Baughan) and Jotham Annan (as both Kwesi and a third-act policeman) draw an arc reminiscent of Philip Ridley’s very best as they explore the tortured poetic natures of these indoctrinated souls. It’s some of the best new writing I’ve heard recently, but unfortunately it feels swamped by the overriding conceit of the play.
Gill’s eloquent fury at hypocrisy and self-interest is a little lost in the broad strokes of Mirror Teeth, probably not helped by director Kate Wasserberg labouring the comedy value harder than feels necessary. Gill tries to up the dramatic stakes by moving the action to the war-torn Middle East, but given the self-conscious set-up it’s hard to care much in the latter stages. The play feels long despite its relative brevity and in the highly self-aware climax you can really feel an unsubtle message being rammed home until it sticks.
Baughan and Annan are excellent, as is Louise Collins as Jenny, whose awakening sexuality is damaging her day by day. Verrey and Skinner are a terrific comic couple, but like Mirror Teeth itself, they feel like a missed opportunity.
Mirror Teeth runs at Finborough Theatre until 30th July.
Photographer: Robert Workman
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