Review: The Unkillable Mike Malloy, Bridge House Theatre

Some people’s energy and enthusiasm know no bounds and one such person is Luke Adamson the Artistic Director and General Manager of The Bridge House Theatre in Penge.

Adamson is continually finding fresh projects, creating and devising new works and providing a vibrant centre for fringe theatre in London’s South East. The Unkillable Mike Molloy is his new venture as not only writer and director but lighting and set designer!

Incredibly, this fantastical tale is based on a true story. We are in New York, the Great Depression, the time of Prohibition. The notorious speakeasy Marino’s, run by Toni Marino (Stefani Ariza), has its regulars, principal among them Mike Molloy (Bryan Pilkington), a larger than life, card-carrying Irishman, and to whom is added new arrival Frank Pasqua (Will Croft), down on his luck but fly enough to look out for the main chance. Frank conjures up an idea to take out insurance policies – three of them – on Molloy’s life because, let’s face it, every night Molloy ends up so dead drunk he looks as though he could keel over any second. Our Frank ropes in Toni and another Marino habitue, a nervy middle-class Kreisberg (Pilkington again). So the quest begins. It should be easy, right? But oh no, Mick ­­– “It’s Michael!” – is made of sterner stuff. Indeed, he is your veritable Bronx Rasputin, who seemingly can digest anything put in front of him, can survive multiple serious attempts on his life: but surely the final gassing of him will do the job? I’ll leave that to you to find out!

This 85 minute piece for three actors – lots of doubling, nay, quadrupling on the part of Ariza and PIlkington – is structured as a kind of flashback. At the start we see our hero Frank in jail awaiting trial together with Toni and he is writing down his story. We get Frank as narrator and actor in the story, jumping in and out of the action. The problem is that we then know they didn’t get away with it so the dramatic tension that should drive the story on is whether each dastardly plan to ice Molloy is finally going to work. Alas – and I say this more in sorrow rather than in anger – there is no upward tension to the acting and the concept. We seem to be on the same repetitive level at every stage. Despite its obvious inspirations from a Humphrey Bogart film noir, this should be played as a farce, with an ever-rising, hysterical sense of panic and frustration at Molloy, who WILL NOT DIE! Greater audibility and sharpness of delivery would help immensely and I fear a lot of the humour is lost. Pilkington, however, gets the main acting award: strong, bold decisions, clear as a bell and full of great energy. Croft and Ariza should give us more oomph and volume and then we can engage. That said, the soundscape (a shout-out to composer Dan Bottomley) is well done, though it fritters out as the show progresses while the lighting kind of works but hats obscuring eyes mean we can’t engage with the actor ­– tip them back or get rid of them!

So all in all a frustrating evening. There is a fantastic story here but it needs some farcical energy to ramp up the mounting tension. At moment its heart is in the right place, but, to be brutally frankly, it could do with a kick up the ass, directorially and acting-wise.

Written, directed, lighting and set design by: Luke Adamson
Sound Design & Composed: Daniel Bottomley

The Unkillable Mike Malloy plays at Bridge House Theatre until Saturday 26 July.