Roy Williams’s ‘The Firm’ premiered at the Hampstead Downstairs in 2017 and it’s now back with the same director, Denis Lawson, and an almost entirely new cast (though Clarence Smith also returns). Set in a south London bar – defo a ‘bar’, not a proper pub – it starts off as a welcome home party for a guy named Shaun who, like Beckett’s Godot, never turns up.
Instead, the now-aging members of Shaun’s gang, known as ‘the firm’, get the party started without him. None of them, it quickly emerges, are quite as interested in criminal activity as they once were. Leslie (Jay Simpson) has fallen in love and taken up swimming lessons, while Gus (Ray Fearon) has constructed his own ‘empire’ in order to send his beloved daughter to private school.
For a moment, it looks like this is going to be about ‘one last job’, a bit like it was for the elderly crew behind the Hatton Garden heist. But ‘The Firm’ is actually less like ‘The Italian Job’ and more like a micro-episode of ‘EastEnders’, with the real drama being about one of the guys’ neglected, now-grown son.
There’s a convincing amount of rapid-fire banter between the old friends, plus some funny moments – in particular, a brief recreation of Jack and Rose’s ‘Titanic’ duet. And the cast put in some strong performances: Fearon (previously the ‘Hot Misogynist’ in ‘Fleabag’) seems like he’s always on the verge of smashing a bottle over someone’s head, then probably dumping the body in the Serpentine in front of stunned tourists.
But the whole thing suffers from not having quite enough going on plot-wise. There’s an interesting thread about the generational clash of ’80s gangs used to fighting Thatcher and modern gangs running after each other with knives, but it always feels like we’re waiting for the main event to actually happen. Maybe if Shaun had shown up after all…