Red Speedo, Orange Tree Theatre Review
Finn Cole (Ray) in Red Speedo. Photo by Johan PerssonWritten by Charlotte for Theatre and Tonic.
Disclaimer: Gifted tickets in return for an honest review. All opinions are our own.
Lucas Hnath’s sports doping drama Red Speedo makes it UK premiere at the Orange Tree just in time for the Paris 2024 games to kick off. The quickfire one-act follows swimmer and Olympic hopeful Ray (Finn Cole) and his self-serving lawyer brother Peter (Ciarán Owens) who hopes to sign Ray with Speedo and reap the financial reward. With everything riding on Ray’s success, the discovery of performance enhancing drugs in the club puts everything on the line.
Billed as a ‘thriller,’ the show plays more like a black comedy where the immoral and the ignorant collide in a series of rapid back-and-fourths punctuated by a piercing (if overused) air horn. Hnath’s snippets of sentences make an earnest attempt at mimicking the overlapping nature of quick conversation, but in performance they often fail to achieve a sense of authenticity. Owens, for his part, plays Peter as though he’s giving his best Donald Trump impression, though whether that’s a commentary on the character or his way into the American accent and fragmented writing, it’s hard to say. In any case, the anticipation of each forthcoming fill-in-the-blank grows tired by the second scene, and I found myself feeling the pace would benefit greatly from a more varied cadence.
Still, the story underneath the tongue-twisting dialogue does feel timely, not only in the obvious sense as the Olympic opening ceremony looms over the Seine, but also as the concept of ‘winning’ grows more fraught, for many, by the day. At its core, Red Speedo is not about doping or brand deals or Olympic swimming–it is about what it really means to ‘win’ and if we can ever truly achieve such a thing. As Ray rises to success and those around him hunger for a piece of it, the price of achievement becomes a bubble near to bursting; but just as hits its breaking point, the lights dim.
This seems to be a pattern for Hnath, whose A Doll’s House Part II had an equally weak ending. Red Speedo spends ninety minutes setting up a strike-worthy set of pins, yet doesn’t bother to knock them down. What are the actual, long-term outcomes of putting success in front of everything? Is it worth it? Can you come back from it? All questions that could be astutely explored by Red Speedo but frustratingly are not.
The real undeniable success story of the production is its design team, with scenery designed and constructed by Anna Fleischle, Cat Fuller, and Anita Gander and lighting by Sally Ferguson. The intimate Orange Tree Theatre is transformed into a club pool with such immersive, evocative care that you can almost smell the chlorine. The addition of an actual, inset pool is particularly impressive and stands as an omnipresent opportunity and danger throughout the play. Ferguson’s brilliant lensing of light through uneven glass panelling makes the relatively small stage feel wide and deep, the blue-green refractions giving an otherwise bare set an unbelievable sense of movement and vibrance.
In the end, Red Speedo may not land its perfect ten, but there is something there that is very much worth chewing on. Whether you go for the masterful design or the darkly funny reflections on ethics in the modern age, you may well emerge with your own ending.
At Orange Tree Theatre until 10 August.
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
