This drama by US playwright Carey Crim boldly explores some very morally grey areas in its story about Tom (David Sturzaker), a well-liked high school English teacher who loses his job and goes to jail after he’s accused of having a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old student.
Crim has written a more interesting play for ducking the issue of Tom’s ultimate guiltiness or innocence. He maintains he didn’t do it. He seems like a nice guy. His wife Leigh (Lisa Dwan) stands by him. But the stats are there: as Leigh’s increasingly estranged friend Jayne (Allyson Ava-Brown) says, barely any such accusations prove to be false, and it is rare a court actually sends a man down on such charges. It doesn’t look good.
But ‘23.5 Hours’ never aims for a definitive final revelation about whether Tom did it or not. Instead it’s about the terrible strain on the family – and specifically Dwan’s Leigh – of trying to soldier on once he’s released. Their happy old life that we briefly see in the opening scene is gone - Tom’s work options are reduced to almost nothing, their friends are suspicious, and even Leigh has her moments; as she puts it in a teary speech near the end, she is convinced of Tom’s innocence… 23-and-a-half hours a day.
It’s such a shame that this fascinating story is told via the medium of bombastic soap opera dialogue: Crim’s lines are clunky and melodramatic, and the relative subtlety of the play as a whole stands in contrast to scenes that are noisy and full of confrontation. Sturzaker does a good job of keeping Tom ambiguous – yes, he’s a ‘nice guy’, but he’s also edgy and erratic post-prison, we never really feel comfortable with him. Dwan is the beating heart of the whole thing and great at showing the sheer strain this all putting on Leigh. But she is also saddled with a lot of overripe speechifying, while their son Nicholas (Jim Matthews) is so stereotypically ‘moody teen’ that he feels more like a meme than a character. Director Katherine Farmer keeps things brisk and engaging, but the ludicrously portentous guitars that kick in when Tom is sent down hardly help the sense of overripeness.
Overall, the good wins out: it’s an interesting play that approaches a difficult subject thoughtfully. But the dialogue grounds what could have been something truly special.