Someday I hope to once again give a play at Hampstead a solid-gold, unqualified rave, but today is not that day. Richard Bean’s unnecessary adaptation of David Mamet’s noirish 1987 film, about a Chicago psychiatrist enthralled by a con artist, continues this once-vital new writing venue’s long run of middling to mediocre shows.
Sure, it’s on the upper end of that spectrum: an efficient, tense piece of work. But the story loses a great deal of its jeopardy and sexual tension in the translation from page to stage. A coolly remote Lisa Dillon and a ferrety Richard Harrington seem barely engaged by the thrill of deception - of pulling a long con and fleecing a mark - let alone aroused by each other.
