Don’t Run continues at the Waterloo East Theatre, London until 7 November.
Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩
Diagnosed with terminal cancer, professional photographer Michael Thompson (Ryan Bennett) disappears. His distraught wife (Stephanie Stone) and three children search for him by trawling his lifelong portfolio of photographs for clues. The journey, which takes them to Paris, Amsterdam and Greece, uncovers many things they didn’t previously know both about their father and themselves.
It’s a powerful story and the episodic structure fits well into a musical theatre format. Devised by the cast, with its origins in a coursework assignment when the cast of 11 were students at Guildford School of Acting, it has now been developed into an entertaining and moving piece of professional theatre directed by Samuel Harjanne. The melodious music (accompanied by Adam Hepworth on keys behind a screen) is a real credit to musical director Hannah Price and musical supervisor James Moriarty.
Bennett has a fine tenor voice and presents Michael in both his 20-something and his 40-something incarnations with great clarity and his final scene with the family is strong. Bradley Judge is good value as the decent, kind, reasonable younger son, Jack, who comes out as gay and astonishes his mother in Amsterdam. His love duet with Pjotr Greenwood (a versatile character actor) is exquisitely well sung. And although Winona Khan as Natalie, the daughter with serious mental health problems, is initially a bit wooden, she comes into her own in Act II when she sings with appropriately poignant sweetness. All characters develop during the course of the action.
There are some well choreographed (by Stephanie Stone) ensemble moments including a nice Amsterdam nightclub scene and a hilarious camped up number sung and danced by Althea Burey, Ruben Kuppens and Pjotr Greenwood as a gay trio. It’s a commendably well-paced show. The subject matter is basically dark – Michael really is going to die and very soon – and the music acknowledges that but balances it with lighter work so that it holds the attention and doesn’t flag.
An ambitious and quite complex concept, Don’t Run is a surprisingly rewarding 90 minutes of theatre.
Susan Elkin
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