Review: Dear Martin, Arcola Theatre

We’re fascinated by psychos, aren’t we? Those terrifying people acting far outside the bounds of civilised behaviour, indulging the sick impulses we fear lie within us all. The real ones scare us to death, and the fictional ones, from Norman Bates to Hannibal Lecter, allow us to indulge our moral voyeurism from a safe distance.

Madeleine Brettingham’s Dear Martin is deliberately vague about the details of what Martin has done to get himself confined within a secure medical institution. What we do know is that Martin has received letters of interest from Dave’s wife Lucy, which have developed into a postal passion which Dave is anxious to curtail. So, Dave applies to visit Martin in his hospital-cum-prison…

Martin (moustachioed, manipulative) is civilised and charming, while Dave (squeaky, gullible) is a hapless mess pathetically petitioning Martin to release his hold on Lucy. Such is Dave’s lack of agency and Martin’s confidence that they soon fall into an unequal relationship, which poor Dave mistakes for genuine friendship. Will Dave win Lucy back? And what are Martin’s true intentions?

The tone of the play is firmly comedic; bar one brief flash of danger. The conventional fear/fascination perspective is sidestepped in favour of a less intense prospect as we’re invited to observe the stereotypically bumbling Dave being toyed with by the stereotypically suave Martin. Some laughter ensues, which may compensate some for the lack of meatier fare.

As Martin, Alex Mugnaioni displays plenty of charisma and has the luxury of camping it up in the more interesting part, embellishing the script with plenty of knowing nods to the audience. Ben Simpson has the harder task of making Dave equivalently interesting. He’s such a one-note character there simply isn’t any depth to mine: he’s just dim and totally without self-awareness. It’s a wonder Lucy married him in the first place, and no surprise that she’s sought stimulation outside the marriage. My companion commented she wouldn’t look at him twice if he was the last man in the world.

The principal cast are supported by Amelia Donkor and Edward Judge as various peripheral characters, including a fellow patient and Martin’s doctor. They do a good job fleshing out the world of the play.

One perplexing aspect of the production is the incidental music. Each short scene is bookended by a brief stab of music. Nothing wrong with that, but the tone of these varies wildly from Hitchcockian to faux sitcom and doesn’t seem much related to the action preceding it. Bizarre and not a little distracting.

Dear Martin provides a few basic laughs and has been competently produced, but it’s neither funny enough nor original enough to linger long in the memory, and certainly has nothing to add, either silly or profound, to the canon of fictional psychopaths.

Written by: Madeleine Brettingham
Directed by: Wiebke Green
Produced by: Arcola Theatre

Dear Martin plays at Arcola Theatre until Saturday 29 March.