Friday 7 May 2010

Review



Knife Edge by Mark Whiteley

Hard Graft Theatre Company,

The Maltings Theatre,

6 May 2010


Knife Edge by Mark Whiteley is a thought-provoking piece of theatre. Brian Shelton, sensitively played by Howard Chadwick, is “just a normal bloke” whose son was stabbed to death months earlier. He believes he knows who did it, and has challenged him to a “duel to the death”.


The audience is almost literally involved, addressed by the cast as attendees of the community meeting he has organised, and at which Brian hopes to flush out the killer.Whiteley’s play is an interesting study of a family beset by grief, guilt, and in particular anger. Brian rails against the local community (“solidarity and all that”), the press, the police, and the ‘killer’, but is also racked with guilt, and apparently unable to communicate with his wife and daughter.


John Elkington excels as the be-cardiganed, local reporter, whose job is to be impartial, to “sit and watch”. He is reluctantly drawn into the centre of the action – his bloody nose literal as well as metaphorical. Whiteley subtly asks questions about the role of the press – at best campaigning, in this instance on knife crime, but at worst happy to betray principles and become a player in the action in order to get an exclusive.Adam Sunderland’s direction is strong – the play is taut, well-paced, and laced with beautifully judged moments of black comedy. But it is the rawness of his wife Jane’s (Jill Myers) hurt, anger and anxiety, and Brian’s dramatic confrontation with the initially cocky young ‘lieutenant’, Danny, a role in which Nicky Bell is all too believable, that become the central drivers of the play.Fittingly for a play with such dark themes, the dram is bookended by music from the man in black, Johnny Cash. Knife Edge packs a powerful, compelling, angry and emotional punch.


Verdict: King of Herts (4 out of 5)

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