Trying to tackle the overwhelming subject of how to live proves too much in Polly Stenhams's No Quarter.
Tom Scutt's beautifully detailed set for Polly Stenham's new play, No Quarter, seems to have stretched the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs. The 90-seat theatre feels taller than I've ever seen it and definitely more imposing. This is not a place you're welcome to make yourself at home. Have a look around maybe, but this is Robin's house now, and it turns out to be the most successfully fleshed-out aspect of this play.
Holed up in his corner of the countryside, accessible only by ca,r dwells Robin and his mum, Lilly. Sadly, while she faces impending death and dementia, her child-like 24 year-old son, played with a cocky swagger by Tom Sturridge, is clinging on to everything he has, especially his blinkered view of the world. Oddly though, Stenham seems to want to make home-schooled Robin the voice of reason (or maybe romance) in her play. In all his family dilemmas and that of the big world outside his small protected one, he is the clear-eyed fatalist who accepts our impending doom. Cocaine helps of course.
He is the antithesis of his politician brother Oliver who has real-world ambition and hope but not the artistic talent or charm of his pianist sibling. Their scenes together are the most interesting but like much of this play, they're too thin.
The action and the characters feel overtly storyboarded, designed to fit together and form a roughly sketched microcosm of Britain today. There are the hedonistic upper class twins Arlo and Scout who charge back into Robin's life writing off his debt and luring him back to the city. There's the infatuated 14 year-old neighbour who idolises him so much so that she ends up in physical danger because of it. Then there's the bit of rough drug dealer and the trainee policewoman, an old friend of Robin's who rocks up out of nowhere to yell about how hard it is to find a job.
They all leave us waiting patiently for gripping reveals about Robin's life and more about his weird persona. But we only get one real reveal that reminds us this is a family drama aiming but failing to be much more. Nothing about Robin's quirks and oddities seem to add much to him. Perhaps he's supposed to be a bit other-worldly in order to point out man's slippery slope into technology dependence. But it's difficult to take him seriously, so detached is he from everyone else.
So is this then a play about the separations of societies and the mindsets that can emerge from the canyons between us? Tom Scutt's design makes me think so. He presents us with an installation created by the two isolated characters at the heart of No Quarter. In the bookshelves, the opulent fabrics, the chandeliers, the hunting trophies, the and the light that creeps shyly into their living room, he presents us with a world built on Lilly's protectionist ideals and Robin's naïve acceptance of the romance and literature his mother offered. And it's all about to be sold.
An interesting idea that isn't really as ground-breaking or insightful as it should be, No Quarter falls into some familiar plot-based pitfalls and the characters are too thin to save it. 
No Quarter runs at Royal Court until 9th February
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