Brunton Theatre, Musselburgh
3 stars
A banker from Macduff makes for an unlikely action hero, yet when Roger
Hunt got caught up in a terrorist raid on his Mumbai hotel in 2008,
that's exactly what he became. Not an action hero in the conventional
sense, but, as he endured forty hours alone with only his thoughts and
a series of text messages to keep him going, his sense of
self-preservation became an inspiration.
Writers Euan Martin and Dave Smith and director Ian Grieve have taken
Hunt's story of human bravery and turned it into a tense hour-long
thriller based on Hunt's book of the same name written with Kenny Kemp.
It opens with Roger, as played by James Mackenzie, about to give a
presentation on his experiences. Within seconds, however, Roger is back
in his hotel room where he takes refuge, texting his wife Irene and
assorted lifelines for help while he hides out.
Much of the latter is done via John McGeoch's set of fast-track video
images projected onto the stage set's back wall, with Mackenzie silent
much of the time. Only when Roger's life flashes back to his first
meeting with Irene or to the ghost of his dead brother does he say more
than a few words.
With it's flashy visuals pulsed by Dave Martin's burbling electronic
sound design, Grieve's production for the Forres-based Right lines
Productions in association with Eden Court, Inverness, resembles the
sort of urgent TV dramas that sprang up on the back of 24. With Helen
Mackay and Ewan Donald playing all other parts, this is an ambitiously
realised and refreshingly unliterary adaptation of an all too real life
and death story.
The Herald, May 10th 2013
ends
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