Clarkston, Trafalgar Theatre review - two lads on a road to nowhere

If you’re a Gen Zer, you’ve probably heard of Heartstopper’s Joe Locke. I’m pretty sure ATG’s Gen Xers in the back office had also heard of him, as tickets are priced up to and beyond £100 for a 100 minutes all-through, ten years old three-hander that would sit comfortably at the Arcola at less than half that price. It was telling that there were a fair few seats unoccupied at the matinee I attended.

Rant over… but seriously guys, Theatre gets a bad rap on prices, often unfairly, and this doesn’t help. But if it definitely can’t justify £100 a pop, can it justify its lead-in price point, a seat at the back for £25? As ever, and trite as it reads even as I write it, that depends on what you’re looking for. Example: as I left, two of the youngest theatregoers I’ve seen this year were enquiring of front of house staff about the location of the stage door.

Inside the house. we’re fetched up in Clarkston, a deadend town somewhere in “The Overfly”, those vast spaces between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts which were/are/will be forgotten by those who transit from New York to Los Angeles without looking up from their in-seat entertainment options and complimentary gin and tonics. It’s named for William Clark who, with Meriwether Lewis, was a pioneer of the Manifest Destiny (er... can I say, Genocide?), the land grab by peoples of European descent, as they pushed westwards through tribal territories.

Jake (Joe Locke) has a future both manifest and destined. His Huntington’s Disease is already palpably affecting his movements and his destiny is to be dead before he's 30. He’s running away to see the Pacific in the hope of finding the peace its name suggests, following in the footsteps of his distant relative, pioneer Clark, reading his diaries to quell his own intrusive thoughts.

He takes a job on the night shift at Costco (Samuel D. Hunter, who wrote the multi-award winning, The Whale, doesn’t shy away from heavy-handedness) where he meets a lad his own age, Chris (Ruaridh Mollica). He is surely too bright and too sensitive to be in that gig without demons holding him back. It’s not long before those demons turn up. 

The issues come thick and fast. Coming out, far away, in every sense, from San Francisco proves still to be tough (who knew?) Moms on meth ain’t easy to live with - Sophie Melville (pictured above) plays Chris’s, and she goes to 11 straight away and stays there. And, bizarrely, Chris and Jake’s re-running the Andy and Red’s iconic last scene of The Shawshank Redemption prompts neither to mention it, despite the former being an aspirant writer, the latter an avid reader and them both being more or less incarcerated in Clarkston's Costco..  

Typical of the pervasive superficiality that irritates as much as it disappoints, is a comic scene with rich kid Jake failing to erect a cheapo tent until Chris helps him out. So, something ironic and wistful about two white guys doing so on Native American lands? Alas no, but Jake majoring in Post-Colonial Feminist Studies was played for laughs - twice. Call me woke, but that seems like a misjudgement. 

What a strange production it is. Despite Locke’s face being on every poster, his performance is understated, flat even, Jake thoroughly alienated by his disease and dysfunctional relationship with his father. The play’s emotional heavy lifting is almost all done by Mollica, who probably has a decent Hamlet in him on this evidence. I’d suggest director, Jack Serio, would have a better play on his hands if he pushed Locke up a little and pulled Mollica down a touch - Melville is okay at intensity level 11 as the part is so small it’s almost a cameo.

So not a very bad play, just not a very good one, the kind that might have started at the Clapham Omnibus or the Camden People’s Theatre, switching out Clacton for Clarkston so the Brits can understand it, before going to Dalston if it were lucky. It would be unfair to say that it’s solely stunt casting that’s got it to the West End, because the Netflix newby can certainly act. 

But I think I’ll say it anyway.  

• Clarkston at Trafalgar Theatre until 22 November
• More theatre reviews on theartsdesk