In the cold, harshly lit and bare space that is a police interview room, a young detective constable has a hunch. An abducted woman may only have hours left to live, and the only lead is a loosely connected man of means and position. Is he really involved, has she got the wrong man, and who or what is truly being interrogated here?
Bethane Cullinane plays the committed and borderline obsessive Detective Palmer, keenly striving to root out the truth, but with her own secrets to hide. Opposite her is Jamie Ballard as Cameron Andrews, a wealthy, white, straight businessman and head of a large financial firm.
An Interrogation is a play that starts out with that rarest of things: a really good premise. Inspired by real life interrogation techniques and practices, the play uses a projection screen and myriad cameras spaced above, around and even underneath the interview table to highlight twitches and fidgets and other small, perceptible moments in a cinematic fashion.
Each of the characters is trying to feel out the other’s motives and the meaning behind their words. But as this is an informal chat rather than an arrest, tact and subtlety mean it's less a game of cat and mouse and more a slew of poker hands: bluffs, calls and wins.
The problem with An Interrogation is that it’s not quite as complex and clever as it thinks it is. Like any good mystery, the clues are all there, and if you are paying attention, you’ll get to the end long before the characters have. What’s more, there’s a strange imbalance to the piece. Another curious choice is that periodically, John MacNeill pops in as Palmer’s superior to berate, cajole or compliment her progress. It feels like he’s been parachuted in from a completely different play, as he’s written as almost a Sweeney-esque cliché, building up to a final note that comes almost from nowhere, and sours the whole experience in its gauche bluntness.
It’s well crafted and makes for an entertaining little mystery, but never quite does the character work to earn the ending it wants to achieve, or to sell the message it finally lands upon.