American playwright Lucas Hnath’s play about doping in professional swimming has good form.
It had an outing at New York Theatre Workshop in 2013 to critical acclaim, and has now been revived at The Orange Tree with sprinkles of stardust from Peaky Blinders actor Finn Cole and compelling newbie Parker Lapaine—of House of the Dragon pedigree.
Form and pedigree are fluent themes of this play, which opens with lawyer of star swimmer Ray describing his client to Ray's trainer: "here is a man who is nothing short of amazing, at age 4 he took his first swimming lesson, at eight he won his first swim competition…"
This rhetoric is a tactic of defence—drugs have been found in a locker and Ray merely interrupts his attorney and coach, played by Ciaran Owens and Fraser James respectively, with a few words here and there. Ray’s role as a commodity to be used or abused is well established.
For theatre fans, Red Speedo’s back and forth of dynamic arguments will feel like familiar but expert territory—TISH graduate Hnath has set-up a story that is tight in dilemma and the kinds of capitalist, patriarchal problems that fill the American canon.
Most satisfying is how Ray’s survival and Peter’s family wealth are brutally entwined, resulting in nuanced tensions of friendship, love and bloody fisticuffs. The fact that it is Ray’s intellectual machinations that cause Peter to spiral rather than vice versa, is a meaty piece of irony to be chewed over.
All actors demonstrate excellence in this four-hander, as we are convinced, engaged and intrigued at each small twist in the matrix. But Owens and Lapaine leave lingering impressions, with Lapaine mixing the kind of intense skill and modelesque presence that shouts of big career moves to come.
The Orange Tree’s courtyard-style auditorium is fitting for a piece evoking the four sides of a swimming pool, and its immersion in blue light, complemented by the odd utilitarian echo, is effective and fun.
For me, there was one key element absent from this drama of winning in the race of life: the thrill of an Olympic race.
While Red Speedo successfully focuses on a cutthroat world of locker-room and poolside power-play, at no point is the swim to win dramatised in its most literal, adrenaline-fuelled sense. This may be a tall ask, but as the production offers a miniature pool of water cut into the stage, such a simulation wouldn't be out of the question.
Red Speedo’s allegory for the pressures of self-advancement in the modern world is, however, watertight, and only made stronger by rock-solid direction from Matthew Dunster and an all-star team. The play is a safe bet for a stellar evening.