Truth and lies, telling what’s real from what’s fake, and how this brings power, is a theme running through Gregory Burke’s new drama from the start where Mancunian H asks Londoner Daz to distinguish between forged and genuine tenners. It’s funny, showing a simple Yes or No isn’t always an answer, and it’s the first of multiple deceptions, widening their scope as the action moves from the police-cell where the two have been placed by Belgian police during a crackdown on English football-followers into a vast nearby international-chain hotel where anonymity’s ensured. There they meet up with H’s old Merseyside mate Ray as deceptions go 3-way, amid comic dialogue and an increasingly pressurised situation, with trouble only a mobile call away.

Matt Wilde’s seamless direction moves from anonymous cell to anonymous hotel-room, both providing the essential flat-surfaces on which Jeff Hordley’s older H and Paul Anderson’s razor-featured, intense young ex-marine can cut a line. Money circulates everywhere, the canny H up to every trick of concealment and diversion. Even nicknames become a form of concealment (Ray’s is ‘Echo’, given he repeats what’s said to him, and referring to the Liverpool newspaper – a joke that’ll no doubt get more recognition when the play transfers).

If an element of chance – luck, as they say here – oils the plot, that fits the way life’s gone for the older characters, especially Andrew Schofield’s Ray. Every scammer knows there are bigger, fiercer boys lurking behind them. Schofield catches the marks experience outside the law’s left on Ray – being variously cautious, defensive, aggressive and desperate. Every sentence in his subtly-shaded performance is out-front attack or a self-protective vocal look over the shoulder.

The others are excellent too, Hordley with his memories of how simple crime used to be, confident and relaxed in manner, keeping control through his connections and by manipulating the others, Anderson seeming the more innocent, a tough, unpredictable ex-marine switch-backing between fury and jokes. Burke keeps the power base shifting among his trio, the plot blinder lying in the last smack coming from the least likely place. A compelling night out with the lads.

Timothy Ramsden

Reviewsgate - October 18th 2005