The Unbuilt City
Kings Head Theatre, 6 June – 30 June 2018
The Unbuilt City is one of two plays currently being performed at the Kings Head Theatre, where it is receiving it’s European Premiere. Directed by Glen Walford, it stars Sandra Dickinson as Claudia, an heiress who finds herself on the receiving end of a charm offensive by a Jonah, played by Jonathan Chambers, in order to secure her extensive yet somewhat mysterious art collection for a University archive, the ultimate goal being one particular piece… if it even exists.
Written by Keith Bunin, who’s vastly superior The Busy World Is Hushed had it’s own European premiere at the Finborough Theatre last year, this latest offering unfortunately failed to ignite in anything like the same way. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why, although things quickly got off to a less than perfect start given that, despite this two hander being set in Claudia’s chilly Brooklyn Heights townhouse in February, the two actors quickly found themselves visibly sweating under the lights on a warm June evening in this non-airconditioned theatre. Would that this had been the only problem with the production however.
The scenario itself is clearly not without potential, and as the two characters slowly began to cajole each other into a conversation that slowly progresses from the mere transactional into something altogether more confessional, there seemed a real opportunity to give the audience a glimpse into the very heart of the characters as the nature of their relationship slowly changes. It was an opportunity that failed to materialise however. Whether it was a lack of chemistry between Dickinson and Chambers is hard to know as Walford’s direction often had the actors performing in an almost oblivious nature to each other, repeatedly delivering large passages of the dialogue out to the gallery instead of to each other. So pronounced was this that at times the actors seemed to break through the fourth wall, albeit for no obvious dramatic purpose, and in doing so only managed to further alienate the audience from any sense of a personal discourse between the characters, and robbed the scenes of any sense that an ongoing connection might have been establishing itself between the pair.
For The Unbuilt City to have played like anything more than a good drama better suited for radio, and indeed it sometimes felt as if it was being performed in that way, the two leads would have needed to establish a much stronger bond than they were clearly being given the opportunity to do here. This lack of connection was further exasperated by both actor’s seemingly unable to find a comfortable rhythm with their dialogue, even on occasion requiring multiple run-ups before a line was successfully nailed. There were a few moments when the piece showed some potential, Dickinson sporadically injecting bursts of real verve and gusto into her performance as Claudia, but these felt too few and far between to save this otherwise lacklustre production.
The set design was unimaginative, the lighting seemed perfunctory and what should have really been a dramatic highlight, towards which the previous 70 minutes had clearly been leading us, had unfortunately long since been robbed of any real dramatic potential.
★★
