Herding Cats, Hampstead Theatre Downstairs

Angry, sad, bad, mad... and here's a man who wants to take a blow torch to a little girl's pussy. The one between her legs. There are so many levels of disconnect in Lucinda Coxon's Herding Cats that a virtual atrocity is simply another inconvenience to be absorbed by characters so isolated from their own humanity that they haven't a clue how to respond to someone else's. Therein, one guesses, lies the rub of this play. What's not to not-like?

No reins on these Dears

The problem for an excellent cast is breathing life into monsters. Justine is jumpy and angry - Violet Elizabeth Bott on amphetamines. Being close to her - and we're very close in the downstairs space at Hampstead - is stressful. Then there's passive Michael who provides phone sex by pretending to be a woman. And a little girl. He's building a dangerous co-dependency with a paedophile (David Michaels) and has just sent him a picture of Justine in a tight top. We are moving from stressful to distressful. And still it keeps coming.

Coxon's vision of modern life is bleak and uncomfortable. There is too much phone talk, a dull set, a gratuitious Christmas scene, and a meaningless ending but it's never boring. Justine (Olivia Hallinan) and Michael (Philip McGinley) initially appear to be lovers and it's late in the play we discover they're just flatmates. Up to that point Justine's acerbic narrative of sexual tensions in the office has come across as a game in which she feeds Michael's need for fantasy. The themes make better sense once their relationship is made explicit.

In conclusion: Herding Cats is a biting study in social isolation and the way social, domestic and sexual taboos are broken in that void. Whether there is extra gain in viewing that corruption in 3D, is a matter of individual taste.

References:
Hampstead Theatre, tickets

Hampstead Theatre is on Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London NW3 3EU. This production is now closed.