Blue Heart Afternoon review, Hampstead Downstairs

Blue Heart Afternoon is a Superman type play. You keep asking yourself if it's a bird or a plane because its shape is never clear. One minute it's a story about sex and Hollywood in the 1940s, the next it's about McCarthyism and the persecution of artists.

In the interval my teen companion asked if everyone in Hollywood had sex with whoever happened to be in the room. At the end she asked why Mr McCarthy didn't want Jews working in his studios... There is no context in Nigel Gearing's script. Past and present merge, always pointing to something deeper while failing to locate it. There is a fair bit of Jewish history with no clear join - or differentiation - between narratives about Nazism and romanticised stories of ghetto life predating 1939. The communist witchhunt is lobbed in without preamble.

It is fortuitous that the mishmash that follows is delivered by a highly experienced cast in a space so small - there are only three rows of seating - you can virtually count Sian Thomas and Ruby Bentall's eyebrow hairs. Both women are smoking properties at the moment - Thomas fresh from Richard II at The Donmar, and Bentall reprieved from the torture of Grief at The National. Both shimmer - the former as a Marlene Dietrich doppelganger and the latter as an unconventional honey trap. Stephen Noonan as the weak songwriter at the heart of both narratives is highly convincing except when at the piano. Peter Marinker is the studio boss.

In conclusion: Directed by Tamara Harvey who turned The Kitchen Sink into one of last year's theatrical highlights - Blue Heart Afternoon is made good enough by theatrical seamstresses who can work a sow's ear with elegance and aplomb.

References
Hampstead Theatre Tickets £15 each

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