trucks?” he sniffs after being
told of Patrizia’s “trucking
empire” by his son. It’s
probably Driver’s performance
that suffers the most from the
film’s winding structure — I
feel like we’re missing a couple
of links in the story of how he
gets sucked into the family
firm again, but it’s not too hard
to imagine. The film is a conga
line of characters seducing
one another. It has Leto
pissing on a scarf. It has Irons
and Pacino on screen together
for the first time since The
Merchant of Venice. It has Gaga
and Driver in a scene deserving
documentary won’t tell you
anything new, but it’s a
poignant tribute to medical
workers in a hard-hit city.
It strikes an acceptable
balance between darkness
and light. Deaths are shown,
but you can be optimistic
about the patients whose
stories are told in detail.
Edward Porter
of a tornado warning. Ridley
Scott certainly has not
forgotten how to make a movie.
“You don’t have to prove
you’re more f***ed up than
me,” someone says in The
Unforgivable, but that’s
all anyone does in Nora
Fingscheidt’s parole drama.
Sandra Bullock plays a woman
named Ruth Slater, who has
just been released from prison
for killing a cop. She’s not
much of a smiler — Bullock is
firmly in dimmed-headlights
mode — but she lands two
jobs, one filleting fish, the
other in construction, where
she is stalked by the cop’s
sons, possibly seeking
vengeance. She’s also in
search of her sister (Aisling
Franciosi), who was adopted
after Ruth went to prison.
It’s a film where people talk
knowingly about “the system”
in a manner suggesting
hard-won street wisdom. Viola
Davis pops up to remind Ruth
of her white privilege, even
as an ex-con. “You’re not a
victim.” It’s not a competition,
but the film feels like a
hard-knocks Olympics: who
gets bragging rights to having
been dealt the worst hand? cThud, thud, here comes the
National Theatre in state-of-
the-nation mode. From the
start it’s full-on apocalypse,
our island being depicted as
a teetering stately home
imperilled by fascists and
floods. Britain is a storm-
drenched realm of sinking
stereotypes with only an NHS
nurse and a teenage lesbian
snog to save us.
The best thing in Moira
Buffini’s Manor is the
backdrop of a scudding sky.
Through the outline of a
Gormenghast castle, clouds
race past in a swirl of blacks
and blues with shafts of
moonlight. Best weather
scene for years. The rest of
this show, despite a drawling,
gumbooted Nancy Carroll as
the chatelaine (name of Lady
Diana), is dire.
Is it dark comedy or
crashing polemic? Comedy
would surely have started
with serenity and then
spiralled into farcical decline.
This one opens with a
screaming row between Diana
and her drug-crazed husband,
much of it inaudible owing to
a heavy hand on the wind-
and-thunder machine. The
husband falls down the deadly
staircase and that seems to be
the end of him — hooray — but
various strangers soon turn
up, seeking sanctuary from
the tempest.
We meet: a mouldy vicar
(Guardian reader); a fat white
man (useless); a black nurse
(good person) who is visiting
from south London with her
politically engaged daughter
(our hope for the future); a
snaky geezer who turns out to
be the leader of a supremacist
movement; his nastyIs the National’s broadside a dark comedy or crashing polemic?
girlfriend, literally
blind; their acolyte,
who may have his
eyes opened. Add a
ghost. Every stately
home needs one.
F-words and
implausible rudeness
abound. An antique
rifle, older than the stage
tropes deployed by Buffini, is
fired. The supremacist,
forgetting he has a bad foot,
tries to get his leg over Lady
Diana. The baddies are
undone only when they
misplace their plans for a
wicked terrorist crusade
against Islam. These plans
were conveniently contained
in a briefcase that was being
looked after by the blind
woman. Never entrust your
plans for world domination
to a blind person without a
guide dog.
All this is framed by the
portentous opening and
closing of the Lyttelton’s
mighty fire curtains,
accentuating a bid for
brooding dystopia. The final
scene has a coup de théâtre of
cascading floodwaters, but as
the actors splosh about the
whole thing reeks of silliness.
When Buffini was last
involved in a climate-change
epic at the National, the
legendarily bad Greenland, we
at least had a polar bear on
stage. Is Manor worse thanGreenland? Good grief, I
do believe it might be.
The Drifters
would have known
what to do. They
would have clicked
their fingers and
broken into dreamy
close harmonies urging
us to Save the Last Dance for
Me. Jukebox musicals have not
been underdone on the West
End, and The Drifters Girl
adds to the canon. I rather
enjoyed it. Beverley Knight
plays Faye Treadwell, the
teacher who in 1957 married
a music impresario and later
became manager of his
biggest group, the Drifters.
She showed considerable grit
and acumen as she fought to
protect her band from legal
challenges to the Drifters
trademark.
Those court battles, albeit
not entirely accurately
portrayed, provide some plot
structure, but the pleasure of
this show, which I caught at a
packed preview, comes from
the songs and the inventive,
vividly lit staging. Big-voiced
Beverley is given a handful of
numbers, but the real music
pleasure is in Drifters classics
such as Under the Boardwalk,
Saturday Night at the Movies
and countless others. Adam
J Bernard, Tarinn Callender,
Tosh Wanogho-Maud and
Matt Henry are a knockout as
the band members. Harmony
in adversity: Moira Buffini
should try it some time. cEye of the storm Nancy
Carroll and Shaun EvansThe state we’re in
HHHHH KO HHHH A-OK
HHH OK HH So-so H No-no
THE
CRITICS
MANUEL HARLANManor
Lyttelton, National Theatre,
London SE1
HThe Drifters Girl
Garrick, London WC2
HHHHQUENTIN
LETTS
28 November 2021 17