‘Foxfinder’ review

Depending on your perspective, this is either a revival for Dawn King’s ‘Foxfinder’ or an extremely belated West End transfer, after its acclaimed, sell-out debut at tiny fringe theatre the Finborough with a different cast and director back in 2011. But Rachel O’Riordan’s new production is also an object lesson in how achieving a winning alchemy of play and production can be as elusive as finding a fox.

Farmers Judith and Samuel Covey (Heida Reed and Paul Nicholls) anxiously await the arrival of William Bloor (Iwan Rheon). After suffering months of worsening crops, they’ve attracted the government’s attention. Their livelihoods depend on William’s investigation. But what will this ‘foxfinder’ conclude?

King’s eco-parable is strongly redolent of ‘70s TV dystopias, with its portrait of a doom-laden English landscape retreating to an unforgiving working of the land to survive. Her elegantly simple premise also has the robust flexibility of the best allegories, accommodating climate change, religious fanaticism and, these days, nationalist politics (cough, Brexit, cough). The stupidly exaggerated fox of William’s ‘training’ is a mind-controlling demon that comes over here, blights our land and steals our hens.

But the show is let down by an uncertainty (of tone, of characterisation) that hovers, sometimes distractingly, over everything. While the Ambassadors Theatre has one of the smaller stages in central London, a lot of tension evaporates into its height. The poised, painterly feel of O’Riordon’s production (and Gary McCann’s set design) sits uneasily with the play, which pivots on the claustrophobia of William’s invasion of Judith and Samuel’s lives.

This production also never gets a consistent grip on the terseness of the script. There are moments of dark wit, but also an overwroughtness that drags. This wavering carries into the performances. Rheon – best known as the sadistic Ramsay Bolton in HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ – could probably do creepily unnerving in his sleep. But here, as the puritanical William, he’s a hesitant presence, never fully bringing his character into focus.

Reed (of ‘Poldark’ fame) and Nicholls do nice enough work as Judith and Samuel, grieving the death of a child while trying to deal with their unwanted houseguest (even if Nicholls largely spends the second half stomping angrily around the cramped set). But it’s Bryony Hannah as the couple’s neighbour, Sarah, who really shines in a relatively few scenes. In a confrontation with William, she brings a much-needed spark of raw desperation to this production.