Review: PRESS, Jack Studio Theatre

A man sits alone in a room. He’s on edge, but trying to be suave. An unseen voice starts to fire questions at him. Is it a police interrogation? Is it a publicity interview? With millions of pounds and many careers on the line, is there so big a difference between those scenarios after all?

Press was an Edinburgh Festival fringe play and has the zip we associate with such productions, a black box two-hander heavily reliant on its actors and script. It’s a curious thing, but like many such shows, it feels simultaneously too long and too short - but more on that later.

Writer/Director Nathaniel Brimmer-Beller plays David, our man in the spotlight, and the TV interview takes place on the morning of the ‘Goldies’ nominations announcement. His film, Catch Me Some Freedom, has been kept under wraps but has a buzz about it suggesting lots of nods will come its way. But Entertainment Now’s questions carry a whiff on passive aggression that turns hostile when the interviewer reveals that research has proved that the hero of the slaves-to-freedmen story was not a white man as cast, but a black man as most definitely not cast. David is wrongfooted and convenes a crisis meeting.

It’s not a bad set up that fizzes with possibilities and relevance, but the hitherto sparkling writing and sharp satire runs into trouble when the interview ends and David sits down with co-producer, Kate (Rosie Hart), to attempt to rescue the situation. 

The armature on which any comedy rests requires very careful construction but this one requires so many circumlocutions that just when it looks to be hitting its stride, it stalls on another plotting device that undermines the narrative. That the film’s somewhat eccentric enfant-terrible director, Joe George Frampton, is off-grid at a healing retreat is just about credible, but a series of panicky phonecalls to film moguls in the hour leading up to the Goldies announcement stretched my faith. So too a quickly floated, quickly ditched idea to do a Max Bialystock and torpedo their own film. It’s hard to keep up with the pair’s madcap plans, as they pile one on top of the other until a resolution emerges that seemed strangely underpowered and ineffective in the light of the stakes as advertised earlier.     

This is where the play needs more time to explore the options available to David and Kate, perhaps without the unlikely time pressure caused by attempting to sub in a alternative nomination at impossibly short notice, It would also allow the character of Kate to be fleshed out, which would strengthen the relationship between her and David which goes largely unexplored. 

As it is, the 40 minutes we spend with them feels unduly long because we don’t really know, nor learn, who they are. We hanker a little for another interview with the spiky Entertainment Now anchor and the squirming David, back in the hot seat as the flames of representation, historical accuracy and the thread of racism that underpins celebrity culture stokes the flames.

There’s much to enjoy about Press, but it rankles a little that there could be much more to enjoy, so much potential latent in disentangling its knot of satire, hypocrisy and social media panics. 

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