The headline attraction in the Finborough’s Vibrant new writing festival, Nick Gill’s black comedy ‘Mirror Teeth’ is a demented rummage around the more psychotic elements of the English psyche, via the microcosm of one model family.
And the Joneses really are a model family: they blandly describe themselves as living ‘in one of the larger cities of Our Country’ and say only exactly what’s on their minds, in formulaic, expositionary terms (‘How lovely to see you both, back from school and university, respectively’ rumbles David Verrey’s deliciously creepy patriarch James to children John and Jenny).
Despite the fact arms dealer John flogs guns to local street gangs, both he and wife Jane live in tutting fear of one day being assaulted by ‘coloureds’; both are gobsmacked when schoolgirl daughter Jenny brings home a black boyfriend (Jotham Annan’s Kwesi).
The satire on Little England values and Western hypocrisy would come across as heavy handed if Gill’s play weren’t so brazenly ludicrous and laugh-out-loud funny. Kate Wasserberg’s chutzpah-laden production is blessed with a superb cast: in particular, Louise Collins is wonderful as the excruciatingly precocious Jenny.
But all this fun doesn’t gel into something wholly satisfying. The genuine anger in Gill’s text is muffled by the absurdism, and after two zippy acts, Wasserberg’s production – billed as 80 minutes but running to 100 – bogs down in a wordy, over-ambitious final third.