How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found

Published Monday 13 October 2008 at 12:45 by Barbara Lewis.

The downfall of a burnt-out, 20-something brand manager, whose career was built on deception and downright theft could have a powerful edge in these financially imploding times. But what should have urgency as a contemporary parable mostly fails to engage under the direction of Ellie Jones, making her debut as Southwark Playhouse’s new artistic director, and the play’s experimental aspect is more puzzling than richly symbolic of all the emptiness and pointlessness.

It begins promisingly enough. Fin Kennedy’s award-winning text strikes chords with work-weary commuters. We laugh at the four-and-a-half minute liquid lunch break and as the company doctor (Becci Gemmell) doles out in the same prescription stay-awake pills and sleeping tablets. But the action hits a longueur never to recover with Richard Bremmer’s portrayal of Mike, a small-time crook specialising in distributing new identities.

He stops short of likeable and the best the production can offer in the way of emotional warmth is from Katrina Cooke as Sophie, a northern-accented pathologist who takes up where the company doctor left off.

As the protagonist Charlie, rebranded as Adam, Luke Norris achieves verbal tours de force, but it’s still hard to avoid concluding the production’s best aspect is Ellen Cairns’ disorientatingly slanted Underground tunnel-like set.