04 February 2016
4000 days
The Park Theatre
reviewed by Adam McCormack
The Park Theatre does “bed theatre” very well. Over the last two years they have had a bed ridden James Bolam in Bomber Moon, a rapidly debilitating Greg Wise in Kill Me Now, and, more recently, entertaining bedroom gymnastics in Tom Attenborough’s production of Dinner with Friends. All of these were excellent productions, so my visit 4000 days, a new play by Peter Quilter, was with some eager anticipation, given that it stars an (initially) comatose Alistair McGowan (fresh from his well reviewed performance as Jimmy Savile also at The Park Theatre).
Overall I was not disappointed. Despite being something of a ponderous start, the prospect of a patient in a coma for 3 weeks but losing his memory of the last 11 years creates a wealth of dramatic potential. Michael is an insurance executive in a long-term relationship with Paul. However, on waking from a coma, Michael does not remember giving up art for business, or ever meeting Paul. Ever attendant at Michael’s bedside is his thrice-married (divorced, widowed and abandoned) mother, who sees the memory loss as a means to repair a fractured relationship with her son and hence relief from her bitter loneliness. The animosity between Paul and Michael’s mother is well conveyed with spikey dialogue and very solid performances from Maggie Ollerenshaw and Daniel Weyman, and it is this that helps the play to work.
After the slow start, the pacing is perfect and the use of news footage and music helps us to realize the importance of the gaps in Michael’s memory. I was, however, left a little underwhelmed by the character of Michael. Alistair McGowan does a good job of portraying a witty but acerbic frustrated artist and his performance is just the right side of being overly camp. Because of his background it would be easy to ask just who he was mimicking in his development of the character, but this would be to understate his undoubted acting abilities. However, the frustrations that anyone would feel over a lost decade, and confusion over not knowing the supposed love of his life, are not fully explored, which seems something of a lost opportunity, leaving a character somewhat underwritten for the sake of some comedic dialogue. Nevertheless, this is undoubtedly a play worth getting out of bed for. ***
