Robert Tanitch reviews This Will End Badly at Southwark Playhouse, London SE1
Rob Hayes’s play is presented in collaboration with CALM, “Campaign Against Living Miserably”, a registered charity, which exists to prevent male suicide.
Did you know that suicide is the biggest single killer of men aged under 45 in the UK and that in 2014 male suicide accounted for 76% of all suicides?
The published text is a monologue but it is so printed as to differentiate three different characters.
In performance the characters are not so different, which is probably the whole point
Ben Whybrow
The men, feeling neutered, irrelevant and ostracised, are coping very badly
One man chases girls, another contemplates suicide and the third has been suffering from chronic constipation since his girlfriend ditched him.
The monologue becomes a catalogue of pain, rage, frustration, and disappointment. The audience found the 11-day constipation particularly amusing.
Bob Hayes insists that the performance must not exceed 60 minutes. So the actor, Ben Whybrow, has to speak his lines very fast which he does with great skill.
This Will End Badly is recommended to casting directors. Whybrow has a strong personality.
To learn more about Robert Tanitch and his reviews, click here to go to his website
Photos credit Ben Broomfield.
