The Maddening Rain at The Old Red Lion Theatre

The Maddening Rain at The Old Red Lion Theatre

02 September, 2010
by: Naima Khan

Matthew Dunster conjures the sound of the city in this dark, funny tale of ambition gone wrong.

Director Matthew Dunster knows how much the details count. Particularly in a one man show as intense as The Maddening Rain at Old Red Lion Theatre, it's the little things that add up. In the limited space above a pub he conveys the unrelenting sounds of London, the repetition of menial office jobs and their breaking impact on the mindset of the city workers we love to judge.

He does it with the sound of constant tube trains, with rainfall and with the impressive Felix Scott in a memorable performance of Nicholas Pierpan's sharp script. The play follows a nameless lad in the city who finds himself embodying everything he despises about the suits that make London seem so corporate. Through this everyman character, Pierpan exerts his poetic side, not so much  lyrically but rather in the rhythm of The Maddening Rain which drums up its own steam and hits the right notes in Scott's hands.

Though well structured, disappointingly the story is nothing new. It would take a bland audience to appreciate the stereotypes: the corporate, career-focused girlfriend who cares too much about what her friends think but is great in bed who soon meets the softer, less superficial ex-girlfriend from his youth. The lead character's lack of a degree and  nomadic, aimless youth might be presented as time ill-spent but is still held up as better option to a soulless job in finance. He goes from one extreme to another as you might expect from a movie on the subject. 

The set is also lackluster. If you sit on the right facing the performance area, you get a limited view of a little office trying to appear corporate but looking more like the headquarters of a mini-cab firm. If you sit to the left, your view of the set would almost certainly be obscured. This is clumsy staging but ultimately, Felix Scott's performance is so absorbing you hardly notice the set anyway. The lighting by Emma Chapman and sound by David Sharrock are enough to carry the atmosphere of the show without the need for much of a set.

Scott, who you're not likely to recognise from his role as 'businessman' in Christopher Nolan's Inception is fantastic. He could have accosted tourists waiting for a bus with this story and it would have had the same effect. He would still have had them hanging on his every word, wondering what depths he'll sink to and cringing at his bottled-up desperation. This is definitely a performance to catch before the end of the shows run on September 18th.

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Naima Khan