Wildefire review, Hampstead Theatre

Sometimes at the end of a play, other people form your thoughts for you. Tonight, within seconds of the cast taking their bow at the end of Roy Williams' new play, Wildefire, the adult family behind me said it was one of the worst things they'd seen. The women to my right, one of whom had been checking the time on her iPhone throughout the performance, started laughing and the one responsible for getting the tickets apologised. A couple on the way out said the sound was a disgrace, though I think it may have been the diction. A friend in the foyer said: "Not one of their best."

Wildefire is dubbed a thriller, but it's not so much thrilling as relentless. When relentlessly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed PC Gail Wilde transfers from Hampshire Police to the Met, she discovers inner-cities are relentlessly heavy on gang rapes and wife bashing. Her oppo, Spence, is bribing the relentlessly scary scrotes who dominate the area to work as CHIS (Covert Human Intelligence Sources). Is there anyone who's straight?  When things go pear shaped and Wilde gets the blame, her spark transforms into a firestorm that relentlessly consumes everything that is good about her, and good about her life...

For Wildefire, Naomi Dawson has transformed the Hampstead stage into a concrete and steel landscape that effectively facilitates poky police cells and urban estates, domestic harmony and domestic abuse. At one point to magnify a dying moment, a spiritual is sung from an overhead walkway: Were you there when they crucified my Lord. There is surely a difference between unintended and voluntary sacrifice of life? Maybe I missed the point.

In Conclusion:  Wildefire is 85 minutes of drama that feels like two and a half hours. If the Director, Maria Aberg, had broken it into two parts allowing the story and the characters to breathe so we could make sense of it, might it work better? As it is, it's slick, professional, well-acted and presented, but its an endurance more than an entertainment.


References
Wildefire, Tickets.



Hampstead Theatre, Eton Road, Swiss Cottage, London NW3.   Run ends 29 November