Graeme Greene’s seminal tale of misguided teenage love and gangsters on the seafront is newly adapted for Pilot Theatre by Bryony Lavery. Whilst staying very much to the period, this latest staging of Brighton Rock does a lot to make explicit the links to modern concerns about young men and their propensity towards violence and manipulation, particularly towards women. It’s a very strong and unapologetically nasty play.
The star of the piece is easily Jacob James Beswick as the iconic Pinkie. His main task on stage is to embody as much menace as possible, which he manages with aplomb. The real nuance though is captured in the ebbs between Pinkie’s bouts of mercurial psychosis. Whilst still vicious, it’s clear that the young hoodlum is also a mess of neuroses and insecurities. He’s a 17-year-old trying to assert himself over a group of more seasoned career criminals, his recurrent misogyny stems from being terrified of girls, and his muddled stance on Roman Catholic dogma shows a childish naivety. Beswick is helped no end by a great costume department. His dapper suit conveys not only Pinkie’s vanity and social affectation, but the close lines of the suit also just suggest some air of a school uniform about him, underscoring that he’s a boy pretending to be a man in the most brutal way possible.
Lavery’s adaptation is very capable, hitting all the points of the novel, and taking an interesting angle from other versions in framing the narrative from the virtuous Ida’s perspective. This offers more of a moral compass to the piece, a watermark against which so many of the characters fall short. It also mediates against the glamourising of violence that can be the downfall of stories about men who are far too free with razors and acid attacks.
This approach does introduce an issue though. Ida herself, as played by Gloria Onitiri, is a strong stage presence but her arc largely consists of prodding at and uncovering events that the audience has already been privy to. As such, her scenes can be frustrating because she is constantly playing catch up, the dramatic irony is never brought to bear, and Ida is ultimately not the main driver of the story’s resolution.
The staging does a good job of mocking up the tacky and touristy atmosphere of the pier with the grimey underbelly of Brighton. A few scenes rely on some slightly obvious musical accompaniment to convey a location, but most of the time the music and set coalesce very nicely to convey the locale or state of the characters. The sickening thrumming when Pinkie’s instincts are rising is especially noteworthy.
Brighton Rock is well put together and knows how to delve into the complicated psychology of its characters, which is no mean feat. I heartily recommend provided you can stomach the aberrant teenage psychopaths. ★★★★☆ Fenton Coulthurst 28th March 2018
