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Review: A Very Expensive Poison, Old Vic – feeling conflicted about this

I haven't felt this conflicted about a play for a long time.

A Very Expensive Poison running times

Lucy Prebble's' new work is based on a book by Luke Harding about the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.

The play opens with Marina Litvinenko (MyAnna Buring) talking to a lawyer about getting justice for her husband in the face of a British Government reluctant to damage diplomatic relations with Russia.

We then jump back to when Alexander (Tom Brooke) first got sick, then back again further to his life in Russia. It threads together how the Russian ended up as a British citizen, a target for the KGB and the investigation into his poisoning

Gripping yarn

It's a gripping yarn but where I'm conflicted is in different styles of storytelling employed.

By turns, it is an edge of the seat thriller, witty satire and a Vaudevillian style farce and is the latter which sits uncomfortably.

The fact is a man died a prolonged, drawn-out unpleasant death in a state-sponsored assassination but many of the Russians of the play are presented as a mixture of 'Carry on the KGB'  and an Austin Powers movie villain.

Bloated and uneven pace

In adding in more outlandish and colourful moments it bloats the play, ruins the pace and demeans the seriousness of the subject.

The play starts off seemingly as a factual drama and ends as a factual drama, indeed the actors come out of character to talk about the people they have portrayed but in between, we have puppets, songs and dances.

Such tactics worked with Enron, Lucy Prebble's West End hit and Broadway transfer, but that was a very dry technical subject and so it injected colour and levity.

The good and bad

I loved the drama of A Very Expensive Poison – it's a fascinating story – and when it is at its best it is laced with wit and biting satire but the Vaudevillian aspects just didn't work for me.

When I saw it, it was nearly 3 hours long but given it's got a long preview period it will undoubtedly tighten up and, who knows, maybe they will make some cuts.

If the running time reduces dramatically then I may revisit to see if it works better because there was stuff in it I really liked. 

A Very Expensive Poison is at the Old Vic until 5 October.

PS I've had conversations with fellow theatre fans who had similar reservations but equally @polyg, whose opinion I respect, loved it so perhaps it's one of those marmite plays.

You might also like to read:

Review: Robert Icke's final play as Almeida AD is The Doctor but does he go out on a high? (On until 28 Sept.)

West End review: Loving the women in Tennesee Williams' The Night Of the Iguana starring Clive Owen and Lia Williams and it runs until 28 Sept.

From the archive: Some things I've learned about Edinburgh Fringe from my first day.

 

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9 responses to “Review: A Very Expensive Poison, Old Vic – feeling conflicted about this”

  1. Ben Tobin avatar
    Ben Tobin

    Banal and over wordy ruination of a good idea, a good 1st 10 minutes, a powerful last 5 minutes and a clever set. Wooden acting especially the male lead.
    Clever idea to vary the accents according to context but the female lead couldn’t maintain any accent for more than a few words and the male lead didn’t bother.
    The ice cream in the interval was the high point.
    What a shame; it could have been a great play without the silly and infantile interruptions.
    At the end of the 1st half, Putin suggested that we might not come back. I never thought I’d agree with Mr Putin. I should have listened.

    Reply
  2. LA avatar
    LA

    Totally agree with some of the key themes of your review! For me it was a bit too wink wink nudge nudge with the audience for such a serious, and really important topic. The actors going in and out of character, personally for me, ruins the theatre experience (and I go a lot so am quite open minded and tolerant of novel approaches). Also, I don’t get the jumping accents, why speak with purported Russian accent to the interviewing detective and irish, English and other GB accents when they are not, sometimes several UK accents in one scene, so bizarre. Some of the musical numbers did not work at all, especially the tutu train dancing number, weird, and not helping the story or the play in any way. The photographer came to take a picture of Litvinenko, that fitting tribute or end would have been to show the photo of real Alexander Litvinenko. Much to my surprise, and I am a fan of the actor who played Alexander, he was so stiff, and somehow managed to make Litvinenko not very likeable character, really disappointed in him, just so so bad here. The bits that worked very well, for me, were those involving Berezovsky, well written, and well acted. Really good. Overall very mixed emotions about this play, and I say unfortunately, as I was really looking forward to it. No mention of continued poisonings by the Russian State in the UK, including the latest of Skripal father and daughter, is also very strange.

    Reply
  3. Louise Penn avatar
    Louise Penn

    I agtee with you, I thought the farcical aspects were dreadful and the male lead was totally inadequate. Very disappointing indeed.

    Reply
  4. Dan Quinn avatar
    Dan Quinn

    Kj

    Reply
  5. Dan Quinn avatar
    Dan Quinn

    Yes, I agree. It was a curate’s egg. On one hand, I admire LP for taking a complicated and heavy story and attempting to make it accessible to a wider audience via an array of theatrical approaches – and that could work in theory, but doesn’t quite here. The tonal variety is bold, and its an emerging trend in theatre, however here it is too extreme, too jolty and too frequent – resulting in a discombobulation and disengagement. There are some wonderful funny moments and Prebble has a knack for a quip. But at times the authorial voice that comes through the various characters comments is glib and self-congratulatory – which is off-putting. In your review you say that Enron was a Broadway hit – on the contrary, it was a WestEnd hit and a massive Broadway flop. People had their fingers badly burned with Enron. I felt that Poison was Prebble thinking “if only I’d put even more theatrics in Enron it might have smashed Broadway”. In fact, I rather suspect the opposite is true. Throughout the performance I never shook the sense that Poison was more about an attempt to prove herself on Broadway (which I doubt it will) than a genuine attempt to explore Marina Litvinenko’s story. It was a bit try-hard. If we’re talking star ratings, I’d give three.

    Reply
  6. Rev Stan avatar
    Rev Stan

    Curate’s egg is a good description. I found the accents confusing until about 30 minutes in when I twigged what they were doing. Completely agree that it felt like it was trying too hard.
    It seems to have got a mixture of 3-5 stars so definitely a play people can’t agree on.
    Didn’t realise Enron hadn’t done so well on Broadway. Thanks for that.

    Reply
  7. Rev Stan avatar
    Rev Stan

    it is such a shame because it is a really interesting topic.

    Reply
  8. Rev Stan avatar
    Rev Stan

    Completely agree about the accents being confusing. It took me about 30 minutes to work out what they were doing. And the Russian accent does have a tendancy to sound ‘compare the Meercat’ anyway.
    You are right about the musical numbers and the actors dropping out of character. It had some bits that were cracking, it just wasn’t the sum of its parts.

    Reply
  9. Rev Stan avatar
    Rev Stan

    Having a character suggest the audience might not want to come back is always a risk. Putin felt like characature.

    Reply

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