Young writer Tim Foley is an exceptional talent. After his highly-praised Fringe debut last year, he returns with his new dark comedy, ‘Meat’, a production as deliciously satisfying as the meal served within it.
This meal, the setting of the entire play, is held at the Catherine’s Club, a male-only establishment at a top British university – Foley and the cast are based at St Andrews – as a scandal involving its president unfolds. Beckoned into the aptly well-hidden underground venue by its owner, played brusquely by David TW Patterson, the audience is sucked into the sordid world of the club, unable and unwilling to withdraw even after the lights have gone down. The production left me buzzing with a cold sensation difficult to account for.
It could be explained by the chilling persistence of Foley’s tight, clever and original script. But this dark intensity and wit of the dialogue is matched by the play’s central performance; Jasper Lauderdale is magnificent as Charlie Moon, the club’s president, hauntingly commanding from the moment of his unexpected entrance to the last word of his disturbing final monologue. His timing is impeccable and his velvet-voiced delivery is close to hypnotic but not without an edge which makes it impossible to predict his next move. Moon’s character is superbly written and Lauderdale does it justice with a portrayal of which he is in total control.
And Foley doesn’t let up with the other five characters, nor do the actors let him down. Geordie Naylor is particularly commendable as the club’s new man, Alex Newman, who plays off Moon’s manipulation and subtle – or otherwise – sexual advances with delightful awkwardness. Equally outstanding was Sebastian Carrington-Howell’s consistent physicality as the mentally disabled Dekker, a character which could easily have been dismissed as a mere plot device.
Foley’s script allows no such shortcuts, however. Jocelyn Cox’s strong direction adds slickness to this skillful development of the story and her staging is simple but with a close attention to detail that allows the actors to do all the work, a challenge which all six unquestionably rise to.
It seems implausible that a play with seemingly little relevance to most people’s lives could be this gripping or this gratifying. But the production is so excellently written and executed that it had the audience wanting not seconds, but a taste of what is next on the menu from this exciting young group.
