The Stage

The Cut

Published Thursday 2 March 2006 at 17:25 by Aleks Sierz

Mark Ravenhill’s new play is about regime change in an unnamed country. In the first scene, Paul - a sinister bureaucrat - administers the “cut” to a prisoner called John. In the next scene, Paul tries unsuccessfully to relax at home with his wife, Susan. Finally, and soon after the government has been overturned, Paul’s son, Stephen, visits him in prison.

The opening scene, in which John - in an inversion of the torturer and victim relationship - demands to be cut, is the strongest, with the dialogue between the two men driving through need and guilt towards a horrible climax. But, in scene two, director Michael Grandage struggles with Ravenhill’s less convincing view of this middle-class marriage and, in the final scene, the appearance of Paul’s son promises a revelation which the text doesn’t provide and the ending is disappointingly downbeat.

Ian McKellen is superb at suggesting Paul’s different personas - the business-like torturer, needy husband and crushed prisoner - and manages to make even the banality of evil seem engrossing. Equally impressive is Jimmy Akingbola as the demanding John and Deborah Findlay as the evasive Susan. Tom Burke is a cool Stephen.

On Paul Wills’s evocative set, Grandage’s pacy production explores the emotional undercurrents swirling between Paul, his wife and their son, relationships in which what is unspoken has the same force as what is said. But, as a parable about the abuse of power, the play works better when it examines the work of the torturer than when it follows him home.