A pair of swimming briefs is sort of the costume for knowledgeable stage debut, which may really feel exposing sufficient for actors. However showing on the most well liked day of the yr, Peaky Blinders’ Finn Cole could nicely have been relieved to be sporting simply the titular trunks of Lucas Hnath’s 2013 play. The mini pool in Anna Fleischle’s hanging set, a part of an in-the-round design that covers the Orange Tree’s stage, partitions and columns in a mosaic of blue, supplies an additional alternative to chill off.
The stillness of that tranquil pool, beneath Sally Ferguson’s shimmering lighting, opposes the more and more uneven lifetime of Cole’s swimmer, Ray, after performance-enhancing medication (PEDs) are found at his membership. This threatens his Olympic ambitions but in addition jeopardises his brother Peter (Ciarán Owens), a lawyer who desires of stage-managing Ray’s glittering future and is engineering a sponsorship cope with Speedo, in addition to Ray’s unnamed Coach (Fraser James), whose fame is at stake too. Private fears are intermingled, to various levels for every, with ethical and moral questions on PEDs, difficult by the arrival of Ray’s ex, Lydia (Parker Lapaine), a sports activities therapist not too long ago embroiled in her personal scandal.
Purple Speedo’s UK premiere has been cannily scheduled alongside the Paris Video games. The efficiency of its debate is additional boosted by the continued doping row about Chinese language swimmers on the 2021 Olympics and the prospect subsequent summer season of the Enhanced Video games, that includes former world champion swimmer James Magnussen, the place PEDs will likely be actively inspired.
Hnath’s principal thesis is {that a} degree enjoying discipline in sports activities is close to not possible attributable to a number of socioeconomic components giving unfair benefits earlier than rivals have even begun coaching. Peter is obsessive about future-proofing his daughter by sending her to personal faculty; Ray wouldn’t be the place he’s with out the free classes Coach gave to his household.
Roy Orbison’s You Obtained It bookends the drama, its silky tones sounding suffocating in mild of Peter’s doubtful insistence of concord. The stability of the play’s symbiotic relationships is precarious: acts of self-preservation always threaten the quid professional quo. It’s Ray who wears an enormous, twisting sea serpent tattoo on his again, however every character shows a slippery intuition. One minute Coach is gently manipulating Ray, the subsequent Peter is straight threatening Coach. First seen aggrandising Ray like a salesman, Owens veers from Mamet-speak to a bullish sourness redolent of Neil LaBute’s writing, although the play’s comedian tone is halting.
The drama gathers some tempo and stress from Holly Khan’s sound: propulsive drumming in between scenes and an intermittent alarm that resembles an prolonged starter buzzer. However the stakes don’t really feel excessive sufficient within the closing stretch, which might be ratcheted up, and Hnath raises intriguing themes with out totally probing them. The place of the pool on stage and the actors’ blocking additionally obscure some exchanges.
Nonetheless, Matthew Dunster’s manufacturing is nicely acted throughout the board. “Issues wash over you,” Lydia tells Ray, and Cole has the suitable unreadable blankness as a younger man who just isn’t as shiny as his character’s identify suggests. Performed at 90 minutes with out an interval, it stings like chlorine however I’d have appreciated some additional laps with these characters.
