Russell Tovey holds the stage and our rapt attention as a police dispatcher in this gripping, hour-long thriller from writer Chloe Moss and director Felix Barrett. Crop-haired and tightly wound, his character Joe efficiently dices incoming calls on the emergency line, talking down a teenager on a ketamine trip and giving short shrift to a man robbed by a young woman posing as a sex worker. Then tearful, terrified Emily comes on the line telling Joe by hints and inferences that she’s been abducted by an armed partner and is in a van hurtling away from London. Her six-year-old daughter Abby and baby son Oliver are home alone. Tension ratchets up as events unfold in real time, Joe making some decisions that are inspired and some that definitely are not.
A Masterclass in Tension and Atmosphere
Moss’s script is adapted from a 2018 Danish film remade in 2021 with Jake Gyllenhaal. It depends on Tovey’s ability to combine vulnerability with a sense of suppressed threat. But it’s not taking anything away from the writer and the performer to say that the animating spirit here seems to be Barrett. Having successfully weaponised FOMO for 25 years with his company Punchdrunk – whose immersive works have been much emulated but never equalled – Barrett most recently distilled the jump-scare franchise Paranormal Activity for the stage. There is surely no more effective manipulator of mood and pace working in British theatre today. I can feel my scalp tightening, thinking again about the chilling surprises The Guilty meticulously springs in both plot and staging.
I can’t give too much away – we’re all handed a card on the way out saying “shh, no spoilers please” – but will say that the final revelation is devastatingly effective, highly theatrical and also slightly corny. The story works through the slow drip of information, an arresting attention to procedure and subtle tweaks in atmosphere.
Character Depth and Performance Nuance
Gradually we learn things about Joe. He has been taken off active duty pending some sort of inquiry that’s due to take place the next day. He is resentfully separated from the mother of his daughter Freya, also six. He may not always operate entirely within the guidelines of his job: a woman calling to complain about noisy neighbours is peremptorily told to get off the line because elsewhere “people are dying in unimaginable ways”.
But he is an efficient dispatcher, deftly extracting information from each caller and breaking it down for those further down the line. A dodgy striplight flickers and a pulsing heartbeat sounds as we listen, breathless, with him, while sirens close on a suspect or officers go through a door. Each shrill bray of his telephone – linked to a red light on his desktop and a GPS system on his computer – works like an electric shock.
Logical Inconsistencies and Dramatic License
There are logical inconsistencies here. Would someone be able to get through to Joe again via a 999 or 101 number? Would he stay on the line during a pursuit or an arrest? Would he really be alone in this shabby ops centre with its watercooler and dead pot plant? Two mothballed desks behind him hint at job cuts.
These questions snag at your mind, but they’re dramatically acceptable fudges that ramp up Joe’s emotional investment and his increasing isolation. Tovey, with a spotlight gleaming on his scalp, modulates his performance beautifully. Even when seated, chatting calmly into his headset mic, he radiates suppressed tension. One of Alan Bennett’s original History Boys, Tovey was typecast in fey, sensitive roles until he consciously changed his body shape in order to play leading men, whether heroes, villains or – as here – something in between. One of our most dependable TV actors, it’s great to see him flexing his stage muscles again.
A Thrilling Theatrical Experience
How lucky are we in London that he can come together with Barrett – best known for works that sprawl across vast sites – in this intimate 251-seat theatre for a thrilling shot of theatrical adrenaline that lasts barely 60 minutes? The Guilty is short, sharp and bracingly, repeatedly shocking. To 15 Aug, donmarwarehouse.com.
